Scientists uncover bacterial resistance to aid biofuel production

Lawrence Livermore researchers and the Joint BioEnergy Institute (JBEI) have discovered a new form of bacterial resistance to improve efficiency in the production of biofuels.

This new type of bacterial resistance will speed up biofuel production by improving the overall efficiency of biomass to biofuel conversion.

Research identified the genetic origin of the bacterial resistance to an ionic liquid (a salt in the liquid state), sourced from a pair of genes in a microbial species in Puerto Rico. The team then successfully placed this liquid into a strain of E. coli bacteria for the production of advanced biofuels.

Michael Thelen, an LLNL biochemist and a member of JBEI's Deconstruction Division, says:
'Ionic liquids are used as potent solvents to extract cellulose from biomass, so that it can be broken down to sugars used by microbes to make advanced biofuels.'

Two genes were found in Enterobacter lignolyticus, a rainforest soil bacterium that can withstand certain specific ionic liquids and were transferred as part of a genetic module. The E. coli could then flourish alongside toxic concentrations of ionic liquids. Therefore, the production of a terpene-based biofuel was improved.

'The new genes confer to E. coli the ability to grow in the presence of normally toxic levels of an ionic liquid, making it possible to produce biofuels more efficiently. The consequences of this study pave the way for further improvements in the microbial conversion of biomass to biofuels,' Thelen adds.

The research, which was funded by the DOE Office of Science, appears in the Nature Communications journal, released yesterday.