Bioenergy at DOE JGI

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The U.S. Department of Energy Joint Genome Institute (DOE JGI) occupies a unique niche as a national user facility dedicated to harnessing the power of information embedded in microbes and plants through DNA sequencing.

Just as computer software is rendered in long strings of 0s and 1s, the “software” of life is represented by a string of four chemicals, abbreviated as A, T, C, and G. To understand the software of either a computer or a living organism, we must know the order, or sequence, of these informative bits.

In the field of bioenergy, sequence data can be applied to the problem of reducing the U.S. dependency on imported oil by improving biomass yield and the efficiency of processes used to convert plant materials into liquid fuels and valuable byproducts.

1. The Benefits of Biomass
2. Why Microbes?
3. What is Metagenomics?
4. Termite Power: Nature's Bioreactor
5. White Rot: Nature's Wood Pulp Processor
6. The Ethanol Producers
7. The Power in Plants
8. The Poplar Tree: Advancing Alternative Energy Sources
9. Soybeans: Translational Genomics for Clean Energy
10. Corn: The Leading U.S. Fuel Ethanol Crop
11. Switchgrass: Power Grass
12. Brachypodium: Growing Grass for Energy

For a perspective about why energy research is so important now, you may want to watch LBNL Director Steve Chu's talk at the 2007 AAAS meeting, The Energy Problem and What We Can Do to Solve It (RealAudio). Dr. Chu's PowerPoint slides are also available.