MIT Yeast Could Speed Up Ethanol Production
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Posted by Cindy Zimmerman – December 7th, 2006
Scientists with the Massachusettes Institute of Technology have engineered yeast that can improve the speed and efficiency of ethanol production.
By manipulating the yeast genome, the researchers have engineered a new strain of yeast that can tolerate elevated levels of both ethanol and glucose, while producing ethanol faster than un-engineered yeast.
The new strain produced 50 percent more ethanol during a 21-hour period than normal yeast.
The work is reported in the Dec. 8 issue of Science.