PGC – The University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign has released findings that claim scientists there have developed a method to efficiently convert plant matter to numerous useful chemical bioproducts. The scientists engineered yeast to interact with plant matter in such a way that it was able to produce a number of useful cehmicals from the plant that had heretofor not been possible. The team used xylos and acetate to interact with a part of the plant called Lignocellulose.
This material is what gives plants their rigidity and structure. It has long been suspected of being a source of biofuel, and now, after these experiments, the sceintists from the University of Illionois Urbana-Champaign are claiming they have an effective method to harvest from plants tremendous new biofuels, meaning someday you might have something like a farm tower in your community that is used to grow the fuel that primarily runs your cars.
Other possibilities for this breakthrough might lead to hospitals one day being able to grow plants in their own on-site farm towers that can be converted to a much wider range of inhouse medicine production than previously imagined. Coupling this technology with chemical 3D printing, going to your neighborhood medical manufacturing center icould become a potential reality in the next few decades. The center might have a couple of farm towers attached to some processing centers and 3D print stations, ready at a moment’s notice to print on demand the medical needs of the community.
Bioprocess for converting plant materials into valuable chemicals — ScienceDaily
From www.sciencedaily.com
2021-08-17 17:14:46
Excerpt:
A team of scientists at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign developed a bioprocess using engineered yeast that completely and efficiently converted plant matter consisting of acetate and xylose into high-value bioproducts.
Lignocellulose, the woody material that gives plant cells their structure, is the most abundant raw material on Earth and has long been viewed as a source of renewable energy. It contains primarily acetate and the sugars glucose and xylose, all of which are released during decomposition.
In a paper published in Nature Communications, the team described its work, which offers a viable method for overcoming one of the major hurdles impeding the commercialization of lignocellulosic biofuels — the toxicity of acetate to fermenting microbes such as yeast.
“This is the first approach to demonstrate the efficient and complete utilization of xylose and acetate for the production of biofuel,” said food science and human nutrition professor Yong-Su Jin. An affiliate of the Carl R. Woese Institute for Genomic Biology, Jin led the research with then-graduate student Liang Sun, the first author of the paper.
