{"id":343,"date":"2010-07-30T15:55:10","date_gmt":"2010-07-30T19:55:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sciencebusiness.technewslit.com\/?p=343"},"modified":"2010-07-30T16:04:24","modified_gmt":"2010-07-30T20:04:24","slug":"biotech-company-finds-gene-enabling-one-step-biofuel-process","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/technewslit.com\/sciencebusiness\/?p=343","title":{"rendered":"Biotech Company Finds Genes Enabling One-Step Biofuel Process"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/technewslit.com\/sciencebusiness\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/07\/LabGlass_200x250.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright size-full wp-image-345\" title=\"LabGlass_200x250\" src=\"http:\/\/technewslit.com\/sciencebusiness\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/07\/LabGlass_200x250.jpg\" alt=\"Beakers and test tubes (Horia Varlan\/Flickr)\" width=\"200\" height=\"250\" srcset=\"https:\/\/technewslit.com\/sciencebusiness\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/07\/LabGlass_200x250.jpg 200w, https:\/\/technewslit.com\/sciencebusiness\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/07\/LabGlass_200x250-120x150.jpg 120w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 200px) 100vw, 200px\" \/><\/a>A team from <a href=\"http:\/\/www.ls9.com\/\">LS9 Inc.<\/a>, in South San Francisco, California published results of research describing the discovery of engineered genes that create alkanes &#8212; the hydrocarbon building blocks of gasoline, diesel, and jet fuel &#8212; from sugar. The company says this discovery, published in today&#8217;s issue of <a href=\"http:\/\/www.sciencemag.org\/cgi\/content\/abstract\/329\/5991\/559\"><em>Science<\/em> magazine<\/a>, accelerates the process of converting biomass into fuel-grade alkanes.<\/p>\n<p>The LS9 team &#8212; Andreas Schirmer, Mathew A. Rude, Xuezhi Li, Emanuela Popova, and Stephen B. del Cardayre &#8212; examined the genomes of cyanobacteria, a type of bacteria that naturally produces alkanes, and found one cyanobacteria that did not produce alkanes. By comparing the genomic sequences of the alkane producing and non-producing organisms, they were able to isolate and identify the genes that make possible alkane production.<\/p>\n<p>The researchers then tested the biosynthetic genes in <em>Escherichia coli<\/em> bacteria, organisms often used in genetic research, which succeeded in producing alkanes.<\/p>\n<p>The directness and simplicity of the process, says del Cardayre, LS9&#8217;s vice president of R&amp;D, is what makes this discovery so important. &#8220;This is a one step sugar- to-diesel process that does not require elevated temperatures, high pressures, toxic inorganic catalysts, hydrogen or complex unit operations.&#8221; Other processes normally require costly and energy intense chemical conversion technologies such as distillation or hydrogenation.<\/p>\n<p>The company says it plans to use this discovery to accelerate its technology and scale up production of biodiesel fuel.<\/p>\n<p>Photo: <a href=\"http:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/horiavarlan\/4273968004\/\">Horia Varlan\/Flickr<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A team from LS9 Inc., in South San Francisco, California published results of research describing the discovery of engineered genes that create alkanes &#8212; the hydrocarbon building blocks of gasoline, diesel, and jet fuel &#8212; from sugar. The company says this discovery, published in today&#8217;s issue of Science magazine, accelerates the process of converting biomass [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[36,21,55],"class_list":["post-343","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-products","tag-biofuels","tag-biotech","tag-genomics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/technewslit.com\/sciencebusiness\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/343","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/technewslit.com\/sciencebusiness\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/technewslit.com\/sciencebusiness\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/technewslit.com\/sciencebusiness\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/technewslit.com\/sciencebusiness\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=343"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/technewslit.com\/sciencebusiness\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/343\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":350,"href":"https:\/\/technewslit.com\/sciencebusiness\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/343\/revisions\/350"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/technewslit.com\/sciencebusiness\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=343"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/technewslit.com\/sciencebusiness\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=343"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/technewslit.com\/sciencebusiness\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=343"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}