Engineering ionic liquid-tolerant cellulases for biofuels production

A Thermophilic Ionic Liquid-Tolerant Cellulase Cocktail for the Production of Cellulosic Biofuels

Generation of biofuels from sugars in lignocellulosic biomass is a promising alternative to liquid fossil fuels, but efficient and inexpensive bioprocessing configurations must be developed to make this technology commercially viable. One of the major barriers to commercialization is the recalcitrance of plant cell wall polysaccharides to enzymatic hydrolysis. Biomass pretreatment with ionic li...

Genetic Engineering for Biofuels Production

Discovery and characterization of ionic liquid-tolerant thermophilic cellulases from a switchgrass-adapted microbial community

BACKGROUND The development of advanced biofuels from lignocellulosic biomass will require the use of both efficient pretreatment methods and new biomass-deconstructing enzyme cocktails to generate sugars from lignocellulosic substrates. Certain ionic liquids (ILs) have emerged as a promising class of compounds for biomass pretreatment and have been demonstrated to reduce the recalcitrance of bi...

Expression of naturally ionic liquid-tolerant thermophilic cellulases in Aspergillus niger

Efficient deconstruction of plant biomass is a major barrier to the development of viable lignocellulosic biofuels. Pretreatment with ionic liquids reduces lignocellulose recalcitrance to enzymatic hydrolysis, increasing yields of sugars for conversion into biofuels. However, commercial cellulases are not compatible with many ionic liquids, necessitating extensive water washing of pretreated bi...

Challenges in engineering microbes for biofuels production.

Economic and geopolitical factors (high oil prices, environmental concerns, and supply instability) have been prompting policy-makers to put added emphasis on renewable energy sources. For the scientific community, recent advances, embodied in new insights into basic biology and technology that can be applied to metabolic engineering, are generating considerable excitement. There is justified o...