I’m not sure about ethanol in general, but, as I’ve mentioned before, advances like this are gains for science and our green goals - especially when we’re talking about biofuels from cellulosic material. So, seems like a pretty good step forward.
RCS Highlight: Methodology:
An effort to increase biofuel production has led scientists to discover genes in yeast that improve their tolerance to ethanol, allowing them to produce more ethanol from the same amount of nutrients… To make this discovery, scientists turned to nature, studying how natural strains of the yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae respond to ethanol treatment. They concluded that many wild strains of yeast respond to ethanol much differently than do traditional laboratory strains. When these wild yeast cells were treated with a low dose of ethanol, they mounted a response to become super-tolerant to high doses. By comparing and contrasting strains with different responses to ethanol, the researchers were able to quickly identify the specific genes responsible for the increased ethanol tolerance. They identified all genes in the yeast genome whose expression was affected when cells responded to ethanol. Comparing the responses of wild strains and a laboratory strain pointed the researchers to genes involved in high ethanol tolerance. The researchers were able to coax super ethanol tolerance in the laboratory strain by increasing expression of these genes.
