JBEI researchers have developed an enzyme-free ionic liquid pretreatment of cellulosic biomass that makes it easier to recover fermentable sugars for biofuels and to recycle the ionic liquid.

The Department of Energy has renewed funding for the Joint BioEnergy Institute (JBEI) for another five years. JBEI is a multi-institutional partnership for advanced biofuels research led by the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab).

Plants are being engineered with low xylan content and a higher proportion of cellulosic sugars for the production of advanced biofuels.

A collaboration by researchers with the Joint BioEnergy Institute (JBEI) and the Idaho National Laboratory (INL) has shown that blending different feedstocks and milling the mixture into flour or pellets has significant potential for helping to make biofuels a cost-competitive transportation fuel technology.

JBEI researcher have identified the first enzyme capable of substantially boosting the amount of galactan sugars in plant cell walls. Readily fermented, galactan sugars are
a target of interest for researchers in advanced biofuels produced from cellulosic biomass.

JBEI researchers have identified a gene in rice plants whose suppression improves both the extraction of xylan and the overall release of the sugars needed to make biofuels.

PR-PR, a simple high-level, biology-friendly robot-programming language developed by researchers at JBEI and Berkeley Lab, uses an object-oriented approach to make it easier to integrate robotic equipment into biological laboratories. Effective robots can increase research productivity, lower costs and provide more reliable and reproducible experimental data.

Berkeley Lab researchers have developed an “adaptor” that makes the genetic engineering of microbial components substantially easier and more predictable.

TeselaGen Biotechnology, founded by JBEI’s Nathan Hillson and two partners, says it will significantly reduce the time and cost involved with DNA synthesis and cloning, a multibillion-dollar market. It is based on the j5 software package, which has attracted users from more than 250 institutions worldwide since JBEI made it available last year.

Researchers at the Joint BioEnergy Institute (JBEI) have identified a tropical rainforest microbe that can endure relatively high concentrations of an ionic liquid used to dissolve cellulosic biomass for the production of advanced biofuels. They’ve also determined how the microbe accomplishes this, a discovery that holds broad implications beyond biofuels.