Research Highlights

Scientists with the Great Lakes Bioenergy Research Center developed a facile approach for bacterial genome-scale over-expression known as CRISPR transposition and OverExpression (CRISPRtOE) and demonstrated that it can upregulate gene expression in medically and industrially relevant Protobacteria by integrating synthetic promoters of varying strength upstream of target genes.

Anaerobic digestion of manure produces methane gas and a digestate residue consisting of a liquid fraction used as fertilizer and a solid fraction (fibers) utilized as soil amendment and animal bedding. This study sought to identify the lignin content and aromatic composition of post-digestion manure fibers and evaluate the potential for microbial funneling to value-added products.

This study demonstrates how two NMR experiments can be applied to deliver clearer and more detailed pictures of plant polymers, which can help researchers better understand what compounds are in plant biomass as well as how they are arranged.

Diterpenoid alkaloids have a wide range of applications, from natural pesticide to treatments for cancer, malaria, inflammation, and pain, yet their structural complexity has hindered efforts to recreate them in the lab. This work will serve as the basis for further pathway discovery towards more complex diterpenoid alkaloid natural products and their biosynthetic production in heterologous hosts.

Scientists used atomistic molecular dynamics simulations to measure the passive permeation for thirty-three lignocellulose derived compounds found in hydrolysates, including aldehydes, carboxylic acids, phenolics, and alcohols. These molecules span chemical space and each pose a unique challenge to the cell.

Researchers used modeling and optimization to evaluate energy and carbon efficiencies, cost, and carbon footprint (CF) of three baseline strategies: electricity generation, biogas upgrade to biomethane, lignin valorization; as well as carbon capture and storage (CCS). They further investigated the impacts of key parameters on system economics and CF as well as implications of geographic variability in co-product selling price of biomethane and electricity.

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.