PRESS-NEWS.org - Press Release Distribution
PRESS RELEASES DISTRIBUTION

UCLA researchers engineer E. coli to produce record-setting amounts of alternative fuel

Altering microbe's metabolism leads to big jump in n-butanol production

2011-03-18
(Press-News.org) Researchers at UCLA's Henry Samueli School of Engineering and Applied Science have developed a way to produce normal butanol — often proposed as a "greener" fuel alternative to diesel and gasoline — from bacteria at rates significantly higher than those achieved using current production methods.

The findings, reported online in the journal Applied and Environmental Microbiology, mark an important advance in the production of normal butanol, or n-butanol, a four-carbon chain alcohol that has been shown to work well with existing energy infrastructure, including in vehicles designed for gasoline, without modifications that would be required with other biofuels.

The UCLA team, led by James C. Liao, UCLA's Chancellor's Professor of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, demonstrated success in producing 15 to 30 grams of n-butanol per liter of culture medium using genetically engineered Escherichia coli — a record-setting increase over the typical one to four grams produced per liter in the past.

For the study, Liao and his team initially constructed an n-butanol biochemical pathway in E. coli, a microbe that doesn't naturally produce n-butanol, but found that production levels were limited. However, after adding metabolic driving forces to the pathway, the researchers witnessed a tenfold increase in the production of n-butanol. The metabolic driving forces pushed the carbon flux to n-butanol.

"Like human beings, microbes need an incentive to work," said Liao, the study's senior author.

"We created driving forces by genetically engineering the metabolism," said Claire R. Shen, a UCLA Engineering graduate student and lead author of the study.

While certain microbes, including species of the bacteria Clostridium, naturally produce n-butanol, Liao's team used E. coli because it is easier to manipulate and has been used industrially in producing various chemicals.

"By using E. coli, we can make it produce only the compound with no other byproducts," Liao said. "With native producing organisms like Clostridium, which naturally produces n-butanol, there are other byproducts that would add cost to the separation process."

The next step in the research, the researchers say, will be to transfer the study to industry for the development of a more robust industrial process.

INFORMATION:

The study was funded by the KAITEKI Institute Inc. of Japan, a strategic arm of Mitsubishi Chemical Holdings Corp., Japan's largest chemical company.

The UCLA Henry Samueli School of Engineering and Applied Science, established in 1945, offers 28 academic and professional degree programs and has an enrollment of almost 5,000 students. The school's distinguished faculty are leading research to address many of the critical challenges of the 21st century, including renewable energy, clean water, health care, wireless sensing and networking, and cybersecurity. Ranked among the top 10 engineering schools at public universities nationwide, the school is home to seven multimillion-dollar interdisciplinary research centers in wireless sensor systems, nanoelectronics, nanomedicine, renewable energy, customized computing, and the smart grid, all funded by federal and private agencies.

END



ELSE PRESS RELEASES FROM THIS DATE:

US healthcare system can't keep up with number of baby boomers' bone fractures

2011-03-18
Los Angeles, CA (March 16, 2011) Many Baby Boomers will experience a bone fracture as they age, and the current US healthcare system is not prepared to provide the necessary care required, according to a special monograph released in the January 2011 issue of Geriatric Orthopaedic Surgery and Rehabilitation (GOS), published by SAGE. The first members of the post World War II Baby Boom generation will reach 65 years old this year. The Baby Boomers encompass an estimated 78 million Americans and are expected to live longer and healthier than preceding generations, however, ...

Daily home dialysis makes 'restless legs' better

2011-03-18
For dialysis patients, performing daily dialysis at home can help alleviate sleep problems related to restless legs syndrome (RLS), according to a study appearing in an upcoming issue of the Clinical Journal of the American Society of Nephrology (CJASN). RLS, a common and troublesome problem for dialysis patients, affects hemodialysis patients about four times as often as people in the general population. These results, from a study by lead author Bertrand L. Jaber, MD (St Elizabeth's Medical Center, Boston) and colleagues, add to the growing list of quality-of-life benefits ...

A mutation causing wrinkled skin of Shar-Pei dogs is linked to periodic fever disorder

2011-03-18
An international investigation has uncovered the genetics of the Shar-Pei dog's characteristic wrinkled skin. The researchers, led by scientists at Uppsala University and the Broad Institute, have connected this mutation to a periodic fever disorder and they propose that the findings could have important human health implications. Details appear on March 17 in the open-access journal PLoS Genetics. Purebred dogs are selected for defined physical features, and the inadvertent enrichment for disease-risk genes may have unexpected health consequences. The thickened and wrinkled ...

Hotels-Paris.co.uk - See Cranach in His Time at Musee du Luxembourg in Paris

2011-03-18
Cranach in His Time is now open at the Musee du Luxembourg in Paris and aims to increase awareness of a fascinating artist. German painter Lucas Cranach the Elder was famous for creating portraits of important political figures and nudes of mythological and religious characters, such as Eve and Venus. Within the latter category, he garnered a reputation for painting images that showed strong females looking sensuous yet unusual. The installation explores the Renaissance artist's unique style and his equally interesting life. It will remain on display until May ...

Versatile vitamin A plays multiple roles in the immune system

2011-03-18
Although it has been known for some time that vitamin A deficiency is linked with an impaired ability to resist infections, exactly how vitamin A and its metabolites contribute to the immune response is not well understood. Somewhat paradoxically, research has indicated that vitamin A can also act as an immunosuppressive agent. Now, a study published by Cell Press in the March issue of the journal Immunity sheds light on how this critical vitamin integrates into both pro-inflammatory and anti-inflammatory immune responses in the gastrointestinal tract. The vitamin A ...

Sexual plant reproduction: Male and female talk in the same way as do cells in your brain

Sexual plant reproduction: Male and female talk  in the same way as do cells in your brain
2011-03-18
VIDEO: During the growth of the pollen tube (in this case of Arabidopsis), the concentration of calcium within varies from higher concentration (red signal) to lower concentrations (blue signal). Click here for more information. A team of researchers at the Instituto Gulbenkian de Ciência (IGC), Portugal, discovered that pollen, the organ that contains the plant male gametes, communicate with the pistil, their female counterpart, using a mechanism commonly observed in ...

200 Douglass Students Fan Out Across East Coast for One-Week Career "Experiment"

200 Douglass Students Fan Out Across East Coast for One-Week Career Experiment
2011-03-18
This Spring Break, students from Douglass Residential College (http://douglass.rutgers.edu) have left campus--not for vacation, but to "try a career on for size." More than 200 sophomores and juniors are participating in this, the 36th annual externship program, a mandatory, one- to two-week-long experience of in-depth mentoring that matches a student with a Douglass alumna whose work most closely mirrors her career aspirations. Students have a choice of three externship segments. For 2011, two segments began in early January; the final 2011 segment kicked off on Monday. ...

Transmissible treatment proposed for HIV could target superspreaders to curb epidemic

2011-03-18
Biochemist Leor Weinberger and colleagues at the University of California, San Diego and UCLA have proposed a fundamentally new intervention for the HIV/AIDS epidemic based on engineered, virus-like particles that could subdue HIV infection within individual patients and spread to high-risk populations that are difficult for public health workers to reach. With a model that considers the effects of the proposed treatment on several scales, from interference with HIV in infected cells to viral loads in individual patients to the prevalence of HIV in large populations, ...

Cytokinetics announces fundamental research in cardiac myosin activation in the journal Science

2011-03-18
South San Francisco, CA, March 18, 2011 – Cytokinetics, Incorporated (Nasdaq: CYTK) announced today the publication of preclinical research in the March 18, 2011 issue of the journal Science regarding the activation of cardiac myosin by an investigational drug candidate, omecamtiv mecarbil, and the potential therapeutic role that this novel mechanism may play for patients with systolic heart failure. This publication reveals, for the first time in a peer reviewed journal, the mechanism of action for omecamtiv mecarbil and the scientific rationale for directly modulating ...

A new evolutionary history of primates

2011-03-18
A robust new phylogenetic tree resolves many long-standing issues in primate taxonomy. The genomes of living primates harbor remarkable differences in diversity and provide an intriguing context for interpreting human evolution. The phylogenetic analysis was conducted by international researchers to determine the origin, evolution, patterns of speciation, and unique features in genome divergence among primate lineages. This evolutionary history will be published on March 17 in the open-access journal PLoS Genetics. The authors sequenced 54 gene regions from 186 species ...

LAST 30 PRESS RELEASES:

Pink skies

Monkeys are world’s best yodellers - new research

Key differences between visual- and memory-led Alzheimer’s discovered

% weight loss targets in obesity management – is this the wrong objective?

An app can change how you see yourself at work

NYC speed cameras take six months to change driver behavior, effects vary by neighborhood, new study reveals

New research shows that propaganda is on the rise in China

Even the richest Americans face shorter lifespans than their European counterparts, study finds

Novel genes linked to rare childhood diarrhea

New computer model reveals how Bronze Age Scandinavians could have crossed the sea

Novel point-of-care technology delivers accurate HIV results in minutes

Researchers reveal key brain differences to explain why Ritalin helps improve focus in some more than others

Study finds nearly five-fold increase in hospitalizations for common cause of stroke

Study reveals how alcohol abuse damages cognition

Medicinal cannabis is linked to long-term benefits in health-related quality of life

Microplastics detected in cat placentas and fetuses during early pregnancy

Ancient amphibians as big as alligators died in mass mortality event in Triassic Wyoming

Scientists uncover the first clear evidence of air sacs in the fossilized bones of alvarezsaurian dinosaurs: the "hollow bones" which help modern day birds to fly

Alcohol makes male flies sexy

TB patients globally often incur "catastrophic costs" of up to $11,329 USD, despite many countries offering free treatment, with predominant drivers of cost being hospitalization and loss of income

Study links teen girls’ screen time to sleep disruptions and depression

Scientists unveil starfish-inspired wearable tech for heart monitoring

Footprints reveal prehistoric Scottish lagoons were stomping grounds for giant Jurassic dinosaurs

AI effectively predicts dementia risk in American Indian/Alaska Native elders

First guideline on newborn screening for cystic fibrosis calls for changes in practice to improve outcomes

Existing international law can help secure peace and security in outer space, study shows

Pinning down the process of West Nile virus transmission

UTA-backed research tackles health challenges across ages

In pancreatic cancer, a race against time

Targeting FGFR2 may prevent or delay some KRAS-mutated pancreatic cancers

[Press-News.org] UCLA researchers engineer E. coli to produce record-setting amounts of alternative fuel
Altering microbe's metabolism leads to big jump in n-butanol production