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New funding supports Princeton’s biofuels efforts

来源机构: 普林斯顿大学    发布时间:2023-3-20点击量:1

“Our work has direct implications on sustainability, not only for renewable energy, but for sustainable biomanufacturing,” said Princeton University’s José Avalos, a co-investigator at one of the four centers and associate professor of chemical and biological engineering (CBE) and the Andlinger Center for Energy.

“That is what, deep down, drives my work,” Avalos said, “the hope that one day, we will contribute to producing renewable energy, or any of the products that we use on a regular basis, in a more sustainable way.” Princeton professors Joshua Rabinowitz and Christos Maravelias are also significant Bioenergy Research Center collaborators.

“To meet our future energy needs, we will need versatile renewables,” said U.S. Secretary of Energy Jennifer M. Granholm. “Continuing to fund the important scientific work conducted at our Bioenergy Research Centers is critical to ensuring these sustainable resources can be an efficient and affordable part of our clean energy future.”

The four centers, each led by a national laboratory or university, are the Great Lakes Bioenergy Research Center, the Center for Bioenergy Innovation, the Joint BioEnergy Institute, and the Center for Advanced Bioenergy and Bioproducts Innovation (CABBI). The renewed investment in these centers promises to yield a range of important new products and fuels derived directly from non-food plant biomass, such as switchgrass, poplar, energy cane and energy sorghum.

Princeton’s Rabinowitz, professor of chemistry and the Lewis-Sigler Institute for Integrative Genomics, is one of the three leaders for CABBI’s “conversion” efforts, using yeasts to convert biomass into biodiesel, organic acids, jet fuels, lubricants and alcohols.

One species of yeast, Issatchenkia orientalis, is best known for fermenting cocoa beans (a vital step in chocolate production), but Rabinowitz and Avalos are using it to convert biomass into the chemicals and materials traditionally produced from petroleum. Their other primary tool, the yeast Rhodosporidium toruloides, has a “very reactive lipid metabolism, which means that it loves to eat and loves to make oils and oily chemicals, including diesel,” Avalos explained.

“We’re eager to apply our growing knowledge of metabolism to address one of the world’s biggest problems, which is renewable energy,” said Rabinowitz. “Many of the key steps from plant waste to biofuel involve metabolism, specifically yeast’s metabolism, so want to ply our tools to figure out exactly where the molecules are going: Where are they going that we don’t want them to go? How can we get them back on track? What are the barriers to efficient conversion of plant waste into biofuels?”

Rabinowitz has been with CABBI since its beginning, but Avalos only recently joined CABBI’s team of researchers. “My work and Josh’s is very complementary, because he is very good at studying metabolic pathways — identifying bottlenecks and branching points and things like that — and in my lab, we have developed the ability to control yeast metabolism using light,” Avalos said.

“If you think of yeast’s metabolism as a series of valves, we can open or close different metabolic valves by turning light on and off,” he explained. “So in combination, Josh’s team and mine can not only engineer better yeast strains, but also better understand what goes on inside the yeast cell.”

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