Research specialists from the Great Lakes Bioenergy Research Center helped design a new strain of yeast that has the potential to improve biofuel production.
Quinn Dickinson, a research specialist at the UW-Madison’s Wisconsin Energy Institute, and Jeff Piotrowski, the lead author of the report, used a method called chemical genomics to produce the yeast strain that could tolerate different ionic liquids, according to a university release.
This is a necessary step to enable the efficient production of biofuel from cellulosic biomass.
While the specific creation of the yeast strain has large implications for biofuel production, the technique itself could prove more valuable for future applications, according to the release.
“What this work shows more broadly is that we can use chemical genomics to rapidly design new yeast strains in response to any new chemical compound, or any new solvent used as part of a new bioconversion technology,” Dickinson said in the release.
