(National Science Foundation) The National Science Foundation (NSF) has announced 15 Emerging Frontiers in Research and Innovation (EFRI) grants for fiscal year 2012, awarding nearly $30 million to 68 investigators at 26 institutions. During the next four years, teams of researchers
cyanobacteria (blue-green algae)
Back TO HOMEBuilding Opportunity: New Tax Credits in Florida Aim to Incent Economic Development and Job Creation Through Biofuel Infrastructure Investments
by Erin Voegele (Biodiesel Magazine) ...Specifically, the bill provides a sales tax refund for materials used in the distribution of blends of B10 through neat B100, ethanol blends of E10-E100, and other renewable fuels produced with biomass feedstock and used
July 19, 2012 Read Full Article
Biological Switch Paves Way for Improved Biofuel Production
(PhysOrg) Scientists from Queen Mary, University of London have discovered a mechanism that controls the way that organisms breathe or photosynthesise, potentially paving the way for improved biofuel production. READ MORE and MORE (EarthSky.org) Abstract
July 18, 2012 Read Full Article
Steven Chu Discusses 'All of the Above' U.S. Energy Strategy
by David Biello (CNET.com/Scientific American) The U.S. government aims to improve energy production from renewables to oil, but what does that mean in practice? Energy Secretary Steven Chu explains. ..."We're not going to be able to just drill our way out
March 13, 2012 Read Full Article
I Want a New Bug: Sapphire Licenses Spirulina from Earthrise for Biofuels
by Jim Lane (Biofuels Digest) In California, Sapphire Energy announced it has entered into a licensing agreement with Earthrise Nutritionals, to integrate Earthrise Nutritionals’ spirulina strain into Sapphire’s growing inventory of cyanobacteria and algae strains for algae-to-energy production. The impact
March 01, 2012 Read Full Article
Biofuel Research Boosted by Discovery of How Cyanobacteria Make Energy
(Science Daily) A generally accepted, 44-year-old assumption about how certain kinds of bacteria make energy and synthesize cell materials has been shown to be incorrect by a team of scientists led by Donald Bryant, the Ernest C. Pollard Professor of
December 27, 2011 Read Full Article
A Big Bang for Algae: South Dakota State University Researchers Develop an Algae Production System for Use in Space … and on Earth
by Erin Voegele (Biorefining Magazine) Single cell photosynthetic organisms, such as blue-green algae, could play an important role in the future of our nation’s space program. Not only could they be used to supply valuable oxygen to fuel life-support systems,
November 10, 2011 Read Full Article
The SuperFriends and Their Planet-Saving Microbial Biofuel Powers
by Jim Lane (Biofuels Digest) In the world at large, they are generally called pests. We call them ‘magic bugs’. They are like the SuperFriends of Saturday morning cartoons – Nature has certainly endowed them with magic powers. ...Too often, public
November 04, 2011 Read Full Article
$ 2.2 Million Department of Energy Grant to Build a Fuel-Producing Bacterium
by Diana Lutz (Washington University) Custom-designed organism could break the stalemate in the algal fuel industry ...(T)he Department of Energy has funded a three-university collaboration led by Washington University in St. Louis to approach the problem of algal fuels systematically. The principal
November 04, 2011 Read Full Article
No-Kill Farming: The Rise of Low-Cost, Low-Carbon Biofuels through Continuous Harvest
by Jim Lane (Biofuels Digest) Does continuous harvest, and direct production from CO2 and water, offer a transformative, no-kill way to improve the carbon and dollar economics of biofuels? Can the dairy model work? ...In beef and grain, the whole organism
November 03, 2011 Read Full Article
Spanish Bank of Algae Inaugurated
(Algae Industry Magazine) The Minister for Science and Innovation of the Spanish Central Government, Cristina Garmendia, along with Paulino Rivero, President of the Canarian Government and José Regidor, Rector of the University of Las Palmas G.C. (ULPGC) have inaugurated the
September 27, 2011 Read Full Article
A New Nexus: Meat & Dairy, Tissue Culturing, and Biofuels
by Jim Lane (Biofuels Digest) Can biotech and biofuels relieve pressure on water, land, food and fuel by revolutionizing meat production? ...(O)ne sector that fell outside our focus on biofuels – but has important consequences for the production of bio-based products,
September 08, 2011 Read Full Article
Stress Protection: How Blue-Green Algae Hoard Energy
(Science Daily/Ruhr-Universitaet-Bochum) Under normal conditions, cyanobacteria, also termed blue-green algae, build up energy reserves that allow them to survive under stress such as long periods of darkness. They do this by means of a molecular switch in an enzyme. By
August 12, 2011 Read Full Article
South Dakota Research Project Could Help Colonize Space
(NewsWise/South Dakota State University) Humans may move one step closer to colonizing space thanks to a new research project that NASA is funding at South Dakota State University, the South Dakota School of Mines and Technology and Oglala Lakota College. The
July 29, 2011 Read Full Article
Bacteria as Biofuel: It's Coming
by Jason Kennedy (IT World) One company figured out a way to turn the byproduct of a genetically modified bacteria into biofuel. ...A Cambridge, MA based company, Joule Unlimited, however, thinks that race might be over with it's ethanol creating genetically
June 09, 2011 Read Full Article
Green and Lean: Secreting Bacteria Eliminate Cost Barriers for Renewable Biofuel Production
(Physorg.com) A Biodesign Institute at Arizona State University research team has developed a process that removes a key obstacle to producing low-cost, renewable biofuels from bacteria. The team has reprogrammed photosynthetic microbes to secrete high-energy fats, making byproduct recovery and
May 27, 2011 Read Full Article
Matrix Genetics Pursues the Algae Fuel Dream in the Lab, Not With Big Steel Tanks, Giant Ponds
by Luke Timmerman (Xconomy Seattle) ...McCormick, one of the featured speakers at next week’s Xconomy event on alternative fuels, has led this quiet effort for the past three years inside Seattle-based Targeted Growth. While Targeted Growth grabbed headlines with hybrid camelina
May 16, 2011 Read Full Article
Cadillac Sugars, Chevrolet Prices
by Jim Lane (Biofuels Digest) A new generation of technologists aim high in value, low in cost, as the race for sugars to process into biofuels amps up a notch or three “You know, we hear numbers like this,” said Daphne
April 29, 2011 Read Full Article
Startup Proterro Engineers Bacteria For Higher Ethanol Producing Sugar Yield
by Mihai Sandru (UK.IBTimes Green Economy) Princeton-based startup Proterro has announced the development of a technology that can produce sugar, the main source for ethanol, by using engineered cyanobacteria, photosynthetic organisms that can produce sucrose through a normally-occurring defense system. ...Their
April 05, 2011 Read Full Article
Scientists Aim to Improve Photosynthesis to Increase Food and Fuel Production
(University of Glasgow) Scientists from the University of Glasgow are working with international colleagues on a £5.4m collaboration to improve the process of photosynthesis. Photosynthesis is the process whereby biological systems convert sunlight into food and the source of all the
April 01, 2011 Read Full Article
Phytonix Corporation Obtains Global License for a Revolutionary Biofuels Technology to Replace Gasoline
(Morningstar Business Wire/Phytonix) Asheville, NC-based Phytonix Corporation now owns the exclusive worldwide licensing rights for a cutting-edge technology to create an environmentally friendly fuel that replaces gasoline. It also has partnered with a top European University laboratory to create the biosafe bacteria
March 14, 2011 Read Full Article
Algae Keep on Rockin’ in the Free World
by Jim Lane (Biofuels Digest) ...From the low points like the closure of the US National Renewable Energy Laboratory’s Aquatic Species Program to highs like 2009′s “Summer of Algae”, aquatic organisms from cyanobacteria to macroalgae have maintained a hold
February 21, 2011 Read Full Article
Proterro Produces Low-Cost Fermentable Sugars
By Susanne Retka Schill (Ethanol Producer Magazine) ...Venture-capital backed Proterro has developed a technology using a microorganism grown in a unique bioreactor that secretes fermentable sugars using sunlight, CO2, water and a few commonly available micronutrients. Economic modeling suggests the
November 22, 2010 Read Full Article
Life Cycle Energy and Greenhouse Gas Emissions for an Ethanol Production Process Based on Blue-Green Algae
by Dexin Luo, Zushou Hu, Dong Gu Choi, Valerie M. Thomas, Matthew J. Realff, and Ronald R. Chance (Environmental Science and Technology) Ethanol can be produced via an intracellular photosynthetic process in cyanobacteria (blue-green algae), excreted through the cell walls, collected
October 26, 2010 Read Full Article
What’s New and Cool: What Inventors are Inventing in Biofuels
by Jim Lane (Biofuels Digest) In Washington, here’s a look at some of the more interesting biofuel-related patent applications logged at the US Patent and Trademark Office in recent weeks. The USPTO’s archive is not for the faint of heart, or
August 11, 2010 Read Full Article
What’s “New and Cool” in the World of Algal Fuel Development
by Jim Lane (Biofuels Digest) ...On the microcrop, bacterial and algael research front. Lemna... The Archaea... Electricity from Waste via microbes... READ MORE
August 10, 2010 Read Full Article
Benchtop Biofuels: Fine-Tuning Growth Conditions Helps Cyanobacteria Flourish
by Richard Harth (Arizona State University) Cyanobacteria are among the oldest living forms in nature, responsible for generating the atmospheric oxygen we breathe today. Now Hyun Woo Kim and Raveender Vannela, researchers at the Biodesign Institute at Arizona State University
July 08, 2010 Read Full Article
Microbes Reprogrammed to Ooze Oil for Renewable Biofuel
(Physorg.com) Using genetic sleight of hand, researcher Xinyao Liu and professor Roy Curtiss at Arizona State University's Biodesign Institute have coaxed photosynthetic microbes to secrete oil—bypassing energy and cost barriers that have hampered green biofuel production. Their results appear in
April 05, 2010 Read Full Article
Sneak-Peek at “Fuel from Thin Air”: Joule Biotechnologies and Its “Game-Changing Technology”
by Jim Lane (Biofuels Digest) ...In the Joule technology, biomass is not used as an intermediate. Via a solar converter unit, the microorganism obtains carbon and oxygen by fixing atmospheric CO2 or utilizing direct fed waste CO2, and obtains hydrogen
March 16, 2010 Read Full Article
Self-destructing Bacteria Improve Renewable Biofuel Production
by Joe Caspermeyer (Renewable Energy World) An Arizona State University research team has developed a process that removes a key obstacle to producing lower cost, renewable biofuels. The team has programmed a photosynthetic microbe to self-destruct, making the recovery of
January 11, 2010 Read Full Article
Cyanobacteria: The New Biofuels Platform?
by Jim Lane (Biofuels Digest) ... 2009 has taught us that the excess of emissions in the skies and shortage of land on the ground may well be solved underwater, through microcrops: algaes. diatoms, cyanobacteria and microscopic flowering plants like
December 29, 2009 Read Full Article
Bacteria Engineered to Turn Carbon Dioxide Into Liquid Fuel
by Matthew Chin (Science Daily) In a new approach, researchers from the UCLA Henry Samueli School of Engineering and Applied Science have genetically modified a cyanobacterium to consume carbon dioxide and produce the liquid fuel isobutanol, which holds great potential
December 11, 2009 Read Full Article
The Rise of Biofuels from Algae
(ClearSkies.com) Clean Skies News Dipka Bhambhani reports on the rise of biofuels from algae as part of the nation's energy portfolio. WATCH VIDEO
August 30, 2009 Read Full Article
Now Sunlight CO2 and Bacteria Equals Ethanol
(New Energy and Fuel) A new bacterium, a cyanobacterium that is energized by sunlight and excretes the sugars glucose and sucrose with some cellulose has been created by Dr. R. Malcolm Brown and Dr. David Nobles at the University of Texas
April 30, 2008 Read Full Article
The Third Domain: The Untold Story of Archaea and the Future of Biotechnology
(Science News) Until 1977, the known classes of life included eukaryotes and bacteria. When microbiologist Carl Woese announced the discovery of a third class, most academics scoffed. Yet today, barely 30 years later, archaea are known to be at least