The challenge of converting cellulosic biomass to sugars is the dominant obstacle to cost-effective production of biofuels in sustained quantities capable of impacting U.S. consumption of fossil transportation fuels. The BioEnergy Science Center (BESC), research program will address this challenge with an unprecedented interdisciplinary effort focused on overcoming the recalcitrance of biomass. The BESC team combines national lab, university and industrial researchers and is described at www.bioenergycenter.org.
By combining engineered plant cell walls to reduce recalcitrance with new biocatalysts to improve deconstruction, BESC plans to revolutionize the processing of biomass. These breakthroughs will be achieved with a systems biology approach and new high-throughput analytical and computational technologies to achieve (1) targeted modification of plant cell walls to reduce their recalcitrance (using Populus and switchgrass as high-impact bioenergy feedstocks), thereby decreasing or eliminating the need for costly chemical pretreatment; and (2) consolidated bioprocessing, which involves the use of a single microorganism or microbial consortium to overcome biomass recalcitrance through single-step conversion of biomass to biofuels.
Within five years the Center will remove biomass recalcitrance as a barrier to cost-effective biofuels production by achieving a minimum two-fold reduction in the projected cost of processing for conversion of biomass to ethanol. We will greatly enhance our understanding of cell wall structure during synthesis and conversion. The data generated will be made available through a Web portal to the bioenergy research community. This talk will provide an overview of the BESC start-up activities and some initial results.