Boise State researcher looks at bacteria’s impact on cellulosic biofuel production

In Idaho, a paper co-authored by Lisa Warner, an assistant research professor in the Biomolecular Research Center at Boise State University, looks at how Clostridium thermocellum breaks down and converts cellulosic biomass to produce biofuels, including hydrogen and hydrocarbons, while also surprisingly decreasing the amount of CO₂ released as a waste byproduct.

“CO₂-fixing one-carbon metabolism in a cellulose-degrading bacterium Clostridium thermocellum” was published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America. Researchers are affiliated with the U.S. Department of Energy’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL).

While researchers have known for a while that many species of bacterium are capable of CO₂ uptake, until now they didn’t know exactly how. This research identified a new metabolic route previously unknown to the scientific community.