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Caption: Timothy Donohue, principal investigator for the Great Lakes Bioenergy Research Center and professor of bacteriology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, is an expert in how microbes harness and convert solar energy. His laboratory researches genetic pathways and networks that microbes use to generate biomass or biofuels from sunlight. His work employs genome sequence, microarrays, proteomics and molecular techniques to determine how the energy in sunlight or renewable nutrients is diverted into cell biomass or biofuel formation.
Date: April 2007
Photo by: B. Wolfgang Hoffmann
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Caption: Sandra Austin-Phillips, a senior scientist at the Biotechnology Center at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, is researching the development transgenic plants that express cellulases and other value-added enzymes that can facilitate the conversion of cellulosic biomass.
Date: June 2007
Photo by: B. Wolfgang Hoffmann
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Caption: Switchgrass, a native North American prairie plant, is pest-resistant and adaptable, holds soil well and produces high yields with little applied fertilizer. For these reasons, it has become a focal point for bioenergy research. Michael Casler, plant geneticist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, is working to improve the economics of biofuel production by developing switchgrass varieties with higher yield and energy content.
Date: August 2006
Photo by: B. Wolfgang Hoffmann
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Caption: Rita Rodrigues, a visiting scientist from Brazil, is part of a University of Wisconsin-Madison and U.S. Department of Agriculture team that has sequenced the genome of Pichia stipitis, a yeast that can efficiently ferment xylose. Xylose is a main component of cellulose. Difficulty fermenting it has been an obstacle to economically converting wood products and agricultural residues to biofuel. Mapping its genome is a step toward solving this problem.
Date: March 2007
Photo by: B. Wolfgang Hoffmann
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Caption: Yuriy Roman-Leshkov, graduate student in chemical engineering, holds a glass reactor vial of the compound hydroxymethylfurfural (HMF), a chemical intermediate created from fructose. HMF can be used to make plastics or diesel fuel from renewable resources rather than from oil. Roman-Leshkov and Jim Dumesic, professor of chemical and biological engineering, have developed a new, more efficient method to produce HMF. The new method solves two of the main drawbacks of previous efforts: First, it creates HMF in high yields, and second, it delivers it in a solvent that allows for easy separation. As long as oil is cheap, people will keep using it, says Roman-Leshkov. "People are just starting to think about alternatives to oil, but I'm very excited to see that our work paves the way for future research," he says.
Date: 2006
Photo by: Michael Forster Rothbart