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These Jacks-of-all-trades are masters, too
In a landmark study based on one of the most comprehensive genomic datasets ever assembled, a team led by scientists at the University of Wisconsin–Madison and Vanderbilt University offer a possible answer to one of the oldest questions about evol
iofuels can be managed either sustainably or unsustainably. In contrast, it is difficult to imagine how fossil energy systems can ever achieve desirable environmental outcomes.
The week of June 16 marked the annual Bioenergy Institute for Educators program at the Wisconsin Energy Institute. Hosted by the Great Lakes Bioenergy Research Center’s (GLBRC) education and outreach staff, the Institute welcomed educators to learn about the latest bioenergy breakthroughs and how to bring contemporary energy content into their classrooms.
n a lightly overcast morning in early June, Great Lakes Bioenergy Research Center (GLBRC) and UW-Madison entomologist Claudio Gratton’s team of researchers and technicians file into a passenger van and head out for another day of gathering insects from the twenty native grassland sites that make up the team’s outdoor summer laboratory.
A recent report from the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has drawn renewed attention to the dire consequences of ongoing human-made climate change. Without a substantial reduction of global carbon emissions, the group warns, the effect of climate change to human and natural communities will inevitably, and catastrophically, worsen.
What began twenty years ago as an innovation to improve paper industry processes and dairy forage digestibility may now open the door to a much more energy- and cost-efficient way to convert biomass into fuel.
You have to go back a long way to trace the origins of Great Lakes Bioenergy Research Center (GLBRC) researcher Bruce Dale’s passion for biofuels and renewable energy.
At the core of lignin – the organic glue that gives plant tissues their structure and sturdiness – is a chemical knot that, like any good knot, resists untangling.
Jeremy Luterbacher, a UW-Madison postdoctoral researcher and the paper's lead author, explains how the Dumesic Lab uses gamma valerolactone, or GVL, to deconstruct plants and produce sugars that can be chemically or biologically upgraded into biofuels.
For decades, John Ralph’s group has been focusing its expertise in biology, chemistry and engineering on one of the most persistent hurdles to a bio-based fuel economy: lignin. As the organic polymer that binds plant cell, vessel and fiber cell walls, lignin resists chemical and enzymatic processing and thus acts as a structural barrier to converting biomass into liquid fuels.
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