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A team of engineers from the National University of Singapore (NUS) recently discovered that a naturally occurring bacterium, Thermoanaerobacterium thermosaccharolyticum TG57, isolated from waste generated after harvesting mushrooms, is capable of directly converting cellulose, a plant-based material, to biobutanol.
A research team led by Associate Professor He Jianzhong from the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at NUS Faculty of Engineering first discovered the novel TG57 strain in 2015. They went on to culture the strain to examine its properties.
Assoc Prof He explained, "The production of biofuels using non-food feedstocks can improve sustainability and reduce costs greatly. In our study, we demonstrated a novel method of directly converting cellulose to biobutanol using the novel TG57 strain. This is a major breakthrough in metabolic engineering and exhibits a foundational milestone in sustainable and cost-effective production of renewable biofuels and chemicals."
[...] Moving forward, the research team will continue to optimise the performance of the TG57 strain, and further engineer it to enhance biobutanol ratio and yield using molecular genetic tools.
The team published the findings of the study in the scientific journal Science Advances on 23 March 2018.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Tuesday April 10 2018, @03:48AM
Corn cobs and stalks are mainly cellulose.
Up to a point, you can have an advantage of using a food stock from which you derive a higher value (than before) of the non-food part of it.
But again, speaking about "limit points", even fusion energy can reach a point where's "all about acres" - if you build a Dyson sphere around the Sun and still need more energy.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford