JBEI team triples rate of biodiesel production from glucose

In California, researchers led by Jay Keasling at the Joint Bioenergy Institute have developed a new technique called a dynamic sensor-regulator system (DSRS) – that can detect metabolic changes in microbes during the production of fatty acid-based fuels or chemicals and control the expression of genes affecting that production. The result in one demonstration was a threefold increase in the microbial production of biodiesel from glucose.

In more news from JBEI, researchers led by Harry Beller engineered Escherichia coli to generate significant quantities of methyl ketone compounds from glucose. In subsequent tests, these methyl ketones yielded high cetane numbers – a diesel fuel rating comparable to the octane number for gasoline – making them strong candidates for the production of advanced biofuels.