1. Adapted from John Gladden’s presentation

2. Provide the nation with clean, green, and renewable transportation fuels that will create jobs and boost the economy

3. Petroleum-based transportation fuels
CO2 accumulates in
the atmosphere, global warming
CO2
CO2
CO2
CO2
CO2
CO2
CO2
There’s a limited supply of fossil fuels
Limited supply of fossil fuels, they won’t be around for forever.
The CO2 emitted from gasoline made from fossil fuels accumulate into the air and build up.

4. Renewable transportation fuels
Using plants creates
a CO2 loop
CO2
Plants are renewable
CO2
Because the carbon source is coming from the plant to begin with, the plant is able to reabsorb the CO2 and it will not accumulate in the atmosphere.

5. Renewable transportation fuels are already being used
sugar
Ferment with yeast
Distill
ethanol
Blend into gasoline
Starch from corn
This is the same yeast used to make bread, beer, wine and spirits!

6. Corn works but is a limited solution
Corn is easy to use but you can’t grow enough for food and fuel
sugar
Ferment with yeast
Distill
ethanol
Blend into gasoline
Competition with food and fuel industries.
Also, you need to grow corn in specific places (It can’t just grow anywhere).
Starch from corn

7. We can use cellulose from plants instead of starch
sugar
Ferment with yeast
Distill
ethanol
Blend into gasoline
Cellulose from plants
Can use the biomass from any plant to extract the cellulose. There are also other sugars in plants that researchers are looking at, but we are focusing on cellulose here.
Plants have lots of sugar in them
(50 to 80%)!
There is one billon tons of plants available for fuel every year!
sugar
sugar

8. JBEI: fuels from plants
There are 3 departments at JBEI. Feedstock, deconstruction and fuel synthesis. The work that I did over the summer had to do with deconstruction.
Feedstock: developing plants whose sugar biomass can be more easily deconstructed to produce biofuel.
Deconstruction: aims to convert cellulose in plant biomass to fermentable sugar, which can be used to synthesize fuel.
Fuel Synthesis: use techniques in synthetic biology engineer microbes that can efficiently ferment the complex sugars from the biomass of plants into biofuel.

9. The BIG problem It’s VERY difficult to get sugar out of plants!
The sugars are locked inside cellulose and hemicellulose.
sugar

10. Nature knows how to do it
There are many fungi and bacteria that can break down plants

11. Fungi and bacteria use enzymes to break down plants
Cellulase
Cellulase is the enzyme that breaks down cellulose.

12. iCLEM students will hunt for new cellulase producing organisms
There are 3 departments at JBEI. Feedstock, deconstruction and fuel synthesis. The work that I did over the summer had to do with deconstruction and finding microbes that produces cellulases naturally.
Feedstock: developing plants whose sugar biomass can be more easily deconstructed to produce biofuel.
Deconstruction: aims to convert cellulose in plant biomass to fermentable sugar, which can be used to synthesize fuel.
Fuel Synthesis: use techniques in synthetic biology engineer microbes that can efficiently ferment the complex sugars from the biomass of plants into biofuel.
You are here

13. iCLEM students found cellulase producing organisms
Isolate organisms
Collect organisms from nature
Characterize and ID the isolates
Assay for cellulases