Kazakhstan is a nation rich in energy resources but plagued by a history of exploitation and a legacy of environmental disasters. With an eye to a diverse economy, sustainable growth, and responsible environmental stewardship, the newly opened Nazarbayev University is establishing a national Center for Energy Research, with guidance from a diverse team of Berkeley Lab scientists.

Using the tools of synthetic biology, Berkeley Lab researchers have engineered the first RNA-based regulatory system that can independently control the transcription activities of multiple targets in a single cell. This is a significant advance for the design and construction of programmable genetic networks.

Researchers at the Joint BioEnergy Institute have created a library of microbial efflux pumps that reduce toxicity and boost production of biofuels in engineered strains of microbes. This library and the bioprospecting strategy behind it should serve as valuable new tools for the development of advanced biofuels and other areas of biotechnology as well.

JBEI and Berkelety Lab researchers have demonstrated a new technique for the metabolic engineering of microbes that speeds up and improves the identification and quantification of proteins within a cell or organism. The new technique is called “targeted proteomics.”

Energy efficiency, electrification and low carbon fuels are essential for California to reduce greenhouse gas emissions 80 percent below 1990 levels by the year 2050. While the challenges are great, they can be met, say Berkeley Lab scientists.

Researchers at the Joint BioEnergy Institute have created an on-line wiki-based technoeconomic model that should help accelerate the development of clean, green biofuels that can compete with gasoline. The model enables researchers to pursue the most promising strategies for cost-efficient biorefinery operations.

A blade of grass destined to be converted into biofuel may pull double duty in the fight against climate change. In addition to offsetting fossil-fuel emissions, scientists are also considering potential bioenergy crops as a tool to snare carbon from the atmosphere and trap it in the soil for millennia.

Global climate change requires breakthroughs in sustainable energy technologies but as a nation we now spend more money on potato chips than we do on sustainable energy research and development. The opening day of the Philomathia Foundation energy symposium at Berkeley showed why this is unsustainable.

An international all-star lineup of experts in solar and biofuel energy, climate science, urban design and other areas of research critical to sustainable energy technologies will gather in Berkeley for a public symposium on October 1 and 2, 2010. The goal is to lay out the best course of action for a clean, green energy future.

Scientists with the Joint BioEnergy Institute have identified a trio of bacterial enzymes that can catalyze key steps in the conversion of plant sugars into hydrocarbon compounds for the production of green transportation fuels.