Socioecology Research Today

A variety of biofuel and biorefinery products have been produced from engineered Escherichia coli till date. Most of these products had been derived from simple sugars in its pure form, rather than deriving it from alternative, renewable and carbon neutral sources, such as marine alga biomass. Engineering E. coli to use algal hydrolysate can make [...]

Here, Nature takes a look at three pressing questions: are GM crops fuelling the rise of herbicide-resistant ‘superweeds’? Are they driving farmers in India to suicide? And are the foreign transgenes in GM crops spreading into other plants? These controversial case studies show how blame shifts, myths are spread and cultural insensitivities can inflame debate. [...]

…Yet so far, she says, the technology has bestowed most of its benefits on agribusiness — almost always through crops modified to withstand weed-killing chemicals or resist insect pests. This has allowed farmers to increase yields and spray less pesticide than they might have otherwise.nature.com/gmcropsAt best, such advances have been almost invisible to ordinary consumers, [...]

An acetone–butanol–ethanol (ABE) mixture, containing 62.9 wt % n-butanol, 29.3 wt % acetone, and 7.8 wt % ethanol, can be produced from biomass through the well-established ABE fermentation process using genetically modified Clostridium acetobutylicum. In this work, the catalytic dehydration reactions of the ABE mixture are studied to deoxygenate the mixture. A feed of the [...]

In his report at the ACS meeting, Brown described how his team already has genetically engineered the cyanobacteria to produce one form of nanocellulose, the long-chain, or polymer, form of the material. And they are moving ahead with the next step, engineering the cyanobacteria to synthesize a more complete form of nanocellulose, one that is [...]

Genetically modified (GM) crops are increasingly gaining acceptance but concurrently consumers’ concerns are also increasing. The introduction of Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt) genes into the plants has raised issues related to its risk assessment and biosafety. The International Regulations and the Codex guidelines regulate the biosafety requirements of the GM crops. In addition, these bodies synergize [...]

The key enzyme in photosynthesis, Rubisco, is a relic of a bygone age. The ability to assemble Rubisco in the test tube offers the prospect of genetically manipulating the enzyme to make it fit for the modern world.Rubisco is the most important enyzme on the planet — virtually all the organic carbon in the biosphere [...]

http://dx.doi.org/10.1126/science.339.6127.1507 Geneticists, ethicists, and physicians reacted with shock to recommendations released last week by the American College of Medical Genetics and Genomics: that patients undergoing genomic sequencing should be informed whether 57 of their genes put them at risk of serious disease in the future, even if they don’t want that information now. The recommendations [...]

http://news.uga.edu/releases/article/uga-discovery-may-allow-scientists-to-make-fuel-from-co2-in-the-atmosp/ The process is made possible by a unique microorganism called Pyrococcus furiosus, or “rushing fireball,” which thrives by feeding on carbohydrates in the super-heated ocean waters near geothermal vents. By manipulating the organism’s genetic material, Adams and his colleagues created a kind of P. furiosus that is capable of feeding at much lower temperatures [...]

Efforts to improve the production of a compound of interest in Saccharomyces cerevisiae have mainly involved engineering or overexpression of cytoplasmic enzymes. We show that targeting metabolic pathways to mitochondria can increase production compared with overexpression of the enzymes involved in the same pathways in the cytoplasm. Compartmentalization of the Ehrlich pathway into mitochondria increased [...]