As the debate surrounding the campus' controversial $500 million deal with energy giant BP rages on, campus researchers have already begun investigations of alternative energy solutions with the funding.

The Energy Biosciences Institute, which was created with the deal's funds, recently chose 49 new research projects and programs, said Susan Jenkins, the institute's assistant director.

The deal between BP, UC Berkeley, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign was signed in November.

The institute's projects are part of a multidisciplinary research platform ranging from the development of efficient biotechnologies to the examination of biofuel socioeconomics.

In an effort to harness innovative techniques in biological system design, a group of scientists at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory is looking at bacteria for help in making the oils needed for biodiesel production.

In biodiesel production, vegetable oils are isolated and processed to form a fuel readily usable in diesel engines.

While precursor oils can be extracted from plants and algae, researchers are interested in utilizing E. coli bacteria to mass-produce the oils on an industrial scale. Bacterial production might end up being cheaper and more efficient than current technologies, said Nikos Kyrpides, one of the project leaders at the U.S. Department of Energy's Joint Genome Institute. The Department of Energy owns the laboratory.

But since E. coli does not normally produce the oils needed for biodiesel, Kyrpides and his colleague Thanos Lykidis plan to transplant the relevant cellular machinery from other organisms into the bacteria.

"The whole idea, in a way, is that we are trying to mimic the pattern we already see in nature," Kyrpides said.

The scientists said they will "mix and match" enzymes from yeast and plants to create the most optimal oil manufacturing system.

"We can identify biochemical pathways and transform E. coli into factories for the production of lipids that can be turned into biodiesel," he said.

Another group at the lab is investigating the bacteria found in the hindguts of grass-eating termites.

Though cellulose-rich grasses are lauded as better alternatives to corn for ethanol production, cellulose is not readily fermented until broken down to component sugars.

The gut bacteria in termites degrade cellulose into sugars that can eventually be used as food for the host.

Termite gut bacteria, therefore, are a unique source of the enzymes capable of breaking down cellulose into manageable sugars for ethanol production, said lab staff scientist Phil Hugenholtz, who is head of the Joint Genome Institute microbial ecology program.

Researchers use what is called a functional screen, in addition to DNA sequencing methods, to probe the multitude of enzymes normally found in the termite hindgut, he said. The screen isolates active cellulose-degrading enzymes from other unrelated enzymes.

Any newly discovered enzymes that break down cellulose could eventually be incorporated into E. coli bacteria or baker's yeast, where they can be mass-produced and used for ethanol production in an industrial setting, he said.

Enzymes from a previous study on wood-feeding termites are already being tested in trials, he said.

Hugenholtz said his research is one part of the multidisciplinary approach used by the institute.

"The Energy Biosciences Institute is good in the way that it's set up," he said. "It has a big view, and it has projects addressing other parts of the equation."

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