One of the key issue in the production of microbial-based drop-in biofuels (potential replacements for gasoline, diesel and jet fuels) is that of toxicity to microbes, which presents a “production versus survival” conundrum. Researchers at the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE)’s Joint BioEnergy Institute (JBEI) have provided a solution to this problem by developing a library of microbial efflux pumps that were shown to significantly reduce the toxicity of seven representative biofuels in engineered strains of Escherichia coli. Lead researcher Aindrila Mukhopadhyay, a chemist with JBEI’s Fuels Synthesis Division, generated a library of largely uncharacterized genes from all available microbial… Login to continue

Login or sign up