Today, carbon-rich fossil fuels, primarily oil, coal and natural gas, provide 85% of the energy consumed in the United States.  The high energy content of liquid hydrocarbon fuels makes them the preferred energy source for all modes of transportation.  The development of cost-effective and energy-efficient processes to transform lignocellulosic biomass into fuels is hampered by significant roadblocks, including the lack of specifically developed energy crops, the difficulty in separating biomass components, low activity of enzymes used to deconstruct biomass, and the inhibitory effect of fuels and processing byproducts on organisms responsible for producing fuels from biomass monomers.
The Joint BioEnergy Institute (JBEI) is a US Department of Energy Bioenergy Research Center that is addressing these roadblocks in biofuels production. Researchers in JBEI’s Feedstocks Division are seeking to understand how plant cell walls are synthesized and are manipulating Arabidopsis, rice, and switchgrass to improve the degradability of their biomass.  Researchers in JBEI’s Deconstruction Division are developing improved biomass deconstruction methods and enzymes (cellulases, hemicellulases, and lignases) to improve the release of sugars from biomass. JBEI’s Fuels Synthesis Division researchers are engineering the platform microbes Escherichia coli and Saccharomyces cerevisiae to produce advanced biofuels compatible with the existing transportation infrastructure.  Finally, researchers in JBEI’s Technology Division are developing advanced technologies to improve the throughput with which experiments can be conducted and to improve the analysis and engineering of the plants, enzymes, and microorganisms that are the focus of JBEI research activities.