Baker's yeast mutant can boost ethanol output -MIT07 Dec 2006 20:16:30 GMT
Source: Reuters
By Timothy Gardner
NEW YORK, Dec 7 (Reuters) - Scientists have engineered baker's yeast to produce ethanol
faster and more efficiently, according to a Massachusetts Institute of Technology research
paper published on Thursday.
The U.S. government is urging greater use of ethanol as a way to stretch domestic motor
fuel supplies and make the country less dependent on foreign oil. U.S. demand for ethanol
has also jumped as the oil industry uses it to replace gasoline additive MTBE, a suspected
carcinogen banned in several states.
The MIT scientists made "super" baker's yeast, by adding a gene already found in the
microbe, to speed up ethanol production by about 50 percent. That could allow ethanol
plants either to make more of the fuel in less time, or make more of the fuel in the same
time, said Dr. Hal Alper, one of authors of the paper, published on Thursday in the
international weekly science journal, "Science."
The mutated yeast could help move U.S. ethanol production beyond its current centralized
location in the Midwest to areas across the country. That's because it can more efficiently
ferment either corn starch, currently the main source of ethanol made in the United States,
or the sugars in woody bits of plants, which are sometimes wasted.
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