Research Highlights

Researchers analyzed a dataset of glucose-induced extracellular acidification rates — as a proxy for glycolytic rates — and phenotypic variation across 282 species with Saccharomycotina to test whether the correlation holds true across an entire subphylum while controlling for phylogenetic covariance and considering two additional traits: genome size and growth rates on glucose.

Researchers used published peptide sequences from other species to identify sorghum genes that may encode peptides and used phylogenetics and transcriptomics to analyze evolutionary relationships and expression patterns across tissue types and developmental stages.

This study describes compendium content and how the compendium has been used to identify sorghum genes/pathways that modulate sorghum growth, development, and resilience. Artificial intelligence and machine-learning-aided analysis of compendium data can guide gene regulatory network analyses, gene editing and pathway/trait engineering.

Increasing wood density can improve the economics of biomass crops without impacting productivity or composition and can enhance supply chain efficiency without negatively affecting biomass conversion.

Saccharomyces cerevisiae is able to produce isobutanol, a promising biofuel, but when glucose is available it tends to make ethanol. Here researchers investigated genes from other species as well as mutations that enable the yeast to direct more sugar towards isobutanol.

Most tools for estimating greenhouse gas emissions from farming use simplistic approaches based almost entirely on fertilizer inputs. By combining process models with machine learning, scientists with the Great Lakes Bioenergy Research Center built a tool that correctly predicted daily emissions four times better than process-based models.

Sorghum is a stress resilient crop and a promising biofuel candidate. Given changing global climate patterns, developing crops that can be grown in intense environments is vital to maintaining robust food and energy sources. The interplay between sorghum genes and tissue specific responses to abiotic stresses at various growth points remains underexplored.

All-atom molecular dynamics simulations were used to investigate the interactions of Z. Mobilis membrane models with key inhibitors, including ethanol, furfural, HMF, and acetic acid. Simulations were conducted across a range of inhibitor concentrations analyzing membrane properties such as area per lipid, membrane thickness, lipid order parameter, lateral diffusion coefficient, and permeability coefficient.

This study demonstrated that it is possible to establish bioreactor operating conditions for stable production of extracellular and intracellular products by N. aromaticivorans, potentially valorizing large amounts of cell biomass generated during biotransformation.

Reductive catalytic fractionation (RCF) is a promising technique to transform lignin into monomers and oligomers that can be biologically upgraded to high-value products. The choice of solvent affects nearly all aspects of the process. This work evaluated a pipeline using RCF of poplar biomass followed by biological funneling with Novosphingobium aromaticivorans to 2-pyrone-4,6-dicarboxylic acid (PDC), a potential bioplastic precursor, using six pure solvents and variations of aqueous mixtures.