Metabolic engineering and next generation biofuel.
Global climate change has stimulated efforts to reduce CO2 emissions. Photosynthetic organisms use solar energy to generate reducing equivalents and incorporate atmospheric CO2 into organic molecules. Cellular phenotype is a manifestation of gene expression levels, metabolic demand, resource availability, and cellular stresses.
Currently, cellulosic biofuels and algal biodiesels are prominent biological approaches to sequester and convert CO2. Today, ethanol and biodiesel are predominantly produced from corn kernels, sugarcane or soybean oil. However another biofuel feedstock, lignocellulose—the most abundant biological material on earth is being explored. Lignocellulose is everywhere—wheat straw, corn husks, prairie grass, discarded rice hulls or trees. The race is on to optimize the technology that can produce biofuels from lignocellulose sources more efficiently—and biotech companies are in the running. There is campaign, which advocates that 25% of US energy come from arable land by 2025. The EU has called for a threefold increase in biofuel use by 2010, to 5.75% of transportation fuel.
Keywords: Fuel molecules, Biomass,waste, cellulosics, Biofuel.
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