The versatile organism Lactococcus lactis, the workhorse bacterium that helps turn milk into cheese, may also be valuable in the understanding of how microbes turn the organic compound cellulose into biofuels. New research from Concordia University, published in the journal Microbial Cell Factories, suggests the bacterium can be engineered to transform plant material into biofuels or other chemicals. Concordia biology professor Vincent Martin and his PhD student Andrew Wieczorek demonstrated how structural or scaffolding proteins on the surface of the bacteria can be engineered in Lactococcus lactis towards the breakdown of plant material. They showed how these scaffold proteins were… Login to continue

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