A TALE OF TWO COUNTRIES
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BY KARI LARSEN

For more than a decade the United States and Australia have been two of the most conspicuous holdouts against signing the 1997 Kyoto Protocol on greenhouse gas reduction. The conservative administrations that led both countries during much of this period initially professed skepticism about global warming claims, and expressed distress regarding China’s and India’s lack of emissions caps. In addition, both countries depend upon coal for much of their energy needs and thus have significant economic concerns over the cost of capping carbon emissions.

In 2009 new and more liberal U.S. and Australian governments launched ambitious efforts to secure passage of legislation to limit GHG emissions while encouraging the use of renewable energy sources. The efforts of the U.S. Congress have increasingly become bogged down as conflicting legislative proposals have emerged, and the dominant issue of health care reform has overshadowed climate concerns.


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BIOFUEL GENOME MAPPED
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DURHAM, NC - A strain of yeast that thrives on turning sugar cane and other tough grasses into ethanol that might be used as biofuel has had its genome completely sequenced. This yeast strain studied and mapped is known as PE-2. Understanding this microbe may enable more efficient biofuel production and will produce even more robust industrial organisms that are versatile and capable of producing advanced biofuels from non-food crops like switchgrass.

When oil prices crept to new highs in the 1970s, Brazil invested in alternative biofuels created from the country's abundant sugar cane crops. Commercially available baker's yeast was used to break down sugar cane into ethanol, but genetic tests showed that this yeast quickly disappeared in the harsh environment of industrial fermentation vats.

However, yeast that grew naturally on the sugar cane was still viable in the vats and lasted through many more generations. We took an organism that is hugely important from an industrial standpoint but completely unknown in terms of its genetic and molecular properties. We learned much more about how a complex genome is organized and may contribute to a robust and well-adapted organism.

I worked with researchers from Brazil and the University of North Carolina on the study. Now we have sequenced the genome, so we have a road map that will allow us to build upon its natural abilities. This opens the door to crossing yeast strains to make even more efficient yeasts for enhanced biofuel production.