Metabolic engineering 'makes seaweed suitable for biofuel composition'

The ever-increasing range of ingredients that may contribute towards biofuel composition has been expanded with the news that seaweed may be a viable biomass option.

Scientists at the University of Illinois College of Agricultural, Consumer and Environmental Sciences explain that "metabolic engineering" can allow seaweed to play a useful role in biofuel composition.

Inefficient fermentation of galactose - which, along with glucose, is one of the sugars contained in red seaweed - has hampered its use in the past.

But now the researchers have found three genes which can be overexpressed in the fermentation microbe Saccharomyces cerevisiae to raise fermentation of galactose by 250 per cent.

Faculty member of the Institute for Genomic Biology at the University of Illinois Yong-Su Jin says: "This discovery greatly improves the economic viability of marine biofuels."

The college reported in November that the rapid pace of ethanol production from corn, coupled with the expectation of falling crop sizes for 2010, is likely to buoy the value of the grain for some time to come.