Technical Presentation about Enzymatic production from fuels & chemicals from lignocellulosic resources

I went to a technical presentation by Dr. Lisbeth Olsson at UBC Forest Science Center today morning.

The title of her presentation is: 

Enzymes and microorganisms in the service of producing fuels, chemicals and material from lignocellulosic resources

The presentation room where Dr. Olsson was presenting

Her research are:

1. Identify and design enzymes
2. Optimization and investigation of the physiological properties of microorganisms, in particular, yeast

She mentioned that lignocellulosic materials are very complex and difficult to break down, although there are methods to break down the lignocellulosic complex. One of the well-established method is enzymatic hydrolysis of lignocellulose.

She is looking for enzymes to:

1. degrade plant cell wall materials to feed sugar platform to produce ethanol
2. modify plant cell wall material to produce custom-made bioploymers (bio-plastics)
3. upgrade plant cell wall material to more valuable products, especially cinnamic acid related compounds

In her project with Sida and FIRI, she obtained microorganism samples from Vietnam to obtain fungal strains and yeast strains. Through a series of selections, she identify the enzyme feruloyl esterases which is capable of cleaving the carboxylic ester bonds. The carboxylic ester bonds are the primary bonds that bound cellulose and lignin together. 

Through process optimization experiments, she showed that the ethanol yield can be increased by 50% by applying feeding propagation of lignocellulosic hydrolases. 

Dr. Olsson also look into improving the cellular robustness to increase the yeast's ability to maintain its performance in face of perturbation and uncertainty. To increase the cellular robustness in acetic acid stress, a strain of yeast from vinegar is obtained and tested.

To remove inhibitors, mainly the toxic phenolic compounds, pathways of bio-conversion of phenolic precursors are investigated. She concluded that conversion, in general does not indicate detoxification, but some pathways are more preferable to convert toxic substrates to non-toxic ones.

Overall, Dr. Olsson stressed that we, as a global community in bio-economy, are moving towards high gravity processes to produce higher volume of bioproducts. Running high gravity processes is tricky thing to do. It can be done more effectively if we increase the physiological understandings of the microorganisms.