{"id":8967,"date":"2016-06-13T08:13:29","date_gmt":"2016-06-13T08:13:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/revoscience.com\/en\/?p=8967"},"modified":"2016-06-13T08:14:32","modified_gmt":"2016-06-13T08:14:32","slug":"chemistry-lessons-from-bacteria-may-improve-biofuel-production","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/chemistry-lessons-from-bacteria-may-improve-biofuel-production\/","title":{"rendered":"Chemistry lessons from bacteria may improve biofuel production"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Researchers<\/a>
Researchers tried to grow different strains of Streptomyces bacteria on dead plant material (in this case, filter paper). Successful cellulose processing strains tapped special genes to produce enzymes that break down cellulose. COURTESY OF CURRIE LAB\/UW-MADISON<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

If you\u2019re made of carbon, precious few things are as important to life as death.<\/span><\/p>\n

A dead tree may represent a literal windfall of the building blocks necessary for making new plants and animals and the energy to sustain them.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThe recycling of plant carbon is fundamental to the function of our ecosystems,\u201d says\u00a0Cameron Currie<\/span><\/a>, professor of bacteriology at the University of Wisconsin\u2013Madison. \u201cWe get food, water, air, energy \u2014 almost everything \u2014 through those ecosystem services. It\u2019s how our planet operates.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

But the component parts of a dead tree were carefully assembled in the first place, and don\u2019t just fall apart for easy recycling.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"The<\/a>
The ability to break down the cellulose in plant material is rare in Streptomyces bacteria, except in strains that live alongside insects \u2014 honeybees, leaf-cutter ants (above), some beetles \u2014that eat or make use of the woody parts of plants. COURTESY OF DON PARSONS\/UW-MADISON<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

In the case of cellulose \u2014 a key structural component in plant cell walls and the most abundant organic compound in life on land \u2014 a world of specialized microbes handles this careful deconstruction. Much of that work is done by fungi growing on decaying plants, but bacteria in the soil, in the guts of animals like cows and working alongside insects, get the job done, too.<\/span><\/p>\n

A new analysis of a group of bacteria called Streptomyces reveals the way some strains of the microbe developed advanced abilities to tear up cellulose, and points out more efficient ways we might mimic those abilities to make fuel from otherwise unusable plant material.<\/span><\/p>\n

Streptomyces were long thought to be prominent contributors at work in breaking down cellulose, and to be equally active in the cause across hundreds or thousands of strains of the bacteria.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThat assumption \u2014 which is based on a very good, old study of one type of Streptomyces \u2014 is not right on the mark,\u201d says\u00a0Brian Fox<\/span><\/a>, a UW\u2013Madison biochemistry professor and co-author of the study published today in the journal\u00a0PLOS Biology<\/span><\/a>. \u201cWhat we see now is that there\u2019s a relatively small group of types of Streptomyces that is far more effective at breaking down cellulose, and a much larger group that is far less effective.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

The UW\u2013Madison researchers measured the relative abilities of more than 200 types of Streptomyces bacteria by growing them on simple sugar and on a good source of cellulose: filter paper (which is made of dead trees).<\/span><\/p>\n

[pullquote]The new study identifies important enzymes, and new groups of enzymes, produced when Streptomyces flex particular genes.[\/pullquote]<\/p>\n

They were able to collect the genomes of more than 120 of those strains, and identify the genes \u2014 and the ways key genes were expressed \u2014 that set strong cellulose degraders apart from poor ones.<\/span><\/p>\n

The successful Streptomyces strains \u2014 which were typically those found living in communities with insects \u2014 ramp up production of certain enzymes, the proteins that do the cleaving and dissolving and picking apart of cellulose.\u201cThe strains that aren\u2019t good at degrading cellulose mostly express the same genes whether we grow them on glucose or on plant material,\u201d says\u00a0Gina Lewin<\/span><\/a>, a bacteriology graduate student and study co-author. \u201cThe strains that are really good at degrading cellulose totally change their gene expression when we grow them on plant material.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThere are families \u2014 six or eight or maybe 10 of these enzymes \u2014 that all of the active Streptomyces have,\u201d Fox says. \u201cAnd this paper shows that the most abundant one of them has to be there or the whole thing collapses.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

It\u2019s the particular combinations of enzymes that makes the research useful to scientists working on biofuels.<\/span><\/p>\n

Biofuels are typically made from the sugars easily extracted from the same parts of plants we eat.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"Counter<\/a>
Counter to long-held belief about the bacteria Streptomyces, seen growing here in a petri dish, the ability to break down a stubborn molecule in plant cell walls called cellulose may be limited to just a few gifted strains. COURTESY OF ADAM BOOK\/UW-MADISON<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

We eat the kernels off the corn cob,\u201d Currie says. \u201cBut most of the energy in that corn plant is in the part which is not digestible to us. It\u2019s not in the cob. It\u2019s in the green parts, like the stalk and the leaves.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Evolving microbes like Streptomyces have been sharpening the way they make use of those parts of plants almost as long as the plants themselves have been growing on land. That\u2019s hundreds of millions of years. On the other hand, the Department of Energy\u2019s UW\u2013Madison-based\u00a0Great Lakes Bioenergy Research Center<\/span><\/a>, which funded the Streptomyces study, was established in 2007.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThe natural world is responding to the same kind of things that humans are,\u201d Fox says. \u201cWe need to get food. We need to get energy. And different types of organisms are achieving their needs in different ways. It\u2019s worth looking at how they do it.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

The new study identifies important enzymes, and new groups of enzymes, produced when Streptomyces flex particular genes. If they represent an improvement over current industrial processes, the microbes\u2019 tricks could make for a great boon to bioenergy production.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cFor a cellulosic biofuel plant, enzymes are one of the most expensive parts of making biofuels,\u201d Lewin says. \u201cSo, if you can identify enzymes that work even just slightly better, that could mean a difference of millions of dollars in costs and cheaper energy.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A new analysis of a group of bacteria called Streptomyces reveals the way some strains of the microbe developed advanced abilities to tear up cellulose, and points out more efficient ways we might mimic those abilities to make fuel from otherwise unusable plant material.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":8961,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16,17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8967","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-biology","category-research"],"featured_image_urls":{"full":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/UW-Madision.jpg",448,287,false],"thumbnail":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/UW-Madision-150x150.jpg",150,150,true],"medium":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/UW-Madision-300x192.jpg",300,192,true],"medium_large":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/UW-Madision.jpg",448,287,false],"large":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/UW-Madision.jpg",448,287,false],"1536x1536":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/UW-Madision.jpg",448,287,false],"2048x2048":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/UW-Madision.jpg",448,287,false],"ultp_layout_landscape_large":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/UW-Madision.jpg",448,287,false],"ultp_layout_landscape":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/UW-Madision.jpg",448,287,false],"ultp_layout_portrait":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/UW-Madision.jpg",448,287,false],"ultp_layout_square":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/UW-Madision.jpg",448,287,false],"newspaper-x-single-post":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/UW-Madision.jpg",448,287,false],"newspaper-x-recent-post-big":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/UW-Madision.jpg",448,287,false],"newspaper-x-recent-post-list-image":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/UW-Madision.jpg",95,61,false],"web-stories-poster-portrait":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/UW-Madision.jpg",448,287,false],"web-stories-publisher-logo":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/UW-Madision.jpg",96,62,false],"web-stories-thumbnail":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/UW-Madision.jpg",150,96,false]},"author_info":{"info":["Amrita Tuladhar"]},"category_info":"Biology<\/a> Research<\/a>","tag_info":"Research","comment_count":"0","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8967","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8967"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8967\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8961"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8967"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8967"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8967"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}