Entry # 1

Hi Everyone, I was just informed by Prof. Brad Sturgeon about this blog and I was very excited to share my summer experiences which I am learning in University of Wisconsin - Madison. I am in an IBS- SRP program which is Integrated Biological Sciences Summer Research Program. I am in a sub group called Bioenergy which is funded by Department of Energy and is a part of Great Lakes Bioenergy Research Center (GLBRC). GLBRC is a government funded research program, which is mainly concern in making biofuels from lignocellulosic biomass. I came to Madison on 27th July and I have been busy since then in my research. I am working in the Department of Biochemistry in John Markley’s Lab.

My Research:

There are various steps in the process of making ethanol from the lignocellulosic biomass (any kind of biomass like switchgrass, corn stover but not the food material we eat). The different steps are:

• Biomass production and delivery
• Pretreatment
• Cellulose Hydrolysis
• Sugar Fermentation
• Biofuel Processing

The current research in GLBRC is focused in all those processes and is working on making those steps easy, economical and effective, because the main challenge for biofuel production from biomass is its high cost involved in each of those steps. There are different labs which are working in each of those steps. My lab is mainly concern about the Cellulose Hydrolysis step. We are using different recombinant cellulases and hemicellulases enzymes for the effective conversion of all cellulose and hemicellulose into their monomeric constituents for fermentation. These monomers primarily include glucose, xylose, arabinose, and mannose, which can be fermented in the appropriate organisms for biofuels.