Cornell researcher discover cellular strategy to produce biofuel through microbes feeding on CO

In New York state, Cornell University biological engineers have deciphered the cellular strategy to make the biofuel ethanol, using an anaerobic microbe feeding on carbon monoxide. To make biofuel from inorganic, gaseous industrial rubbish, the researchers learned that the bacterium Clostridium ljungdahlii responds thermodynamically – rather than genetically – in the process of tuning favorable enzymatic reactions.

The study, “Ethanol Production in Syngas-Fermenting Clostridium ljungdahlii Is Controlled by Thermodynamics Rather Than by Enzyme Expression,” was published in the May 2016 issue of Energy and Environmental Science and was funded by the National Science Foundation, the German Research Foundation, philanthropist Yossie Hollander and the Foundation des Fondateurs.