Biofuels from Versatile Bacteria

ESD’s Tamas Torok and Hoi-Ying Holman, in collaboration with Michael Cohen of Sonoma State, are studying alkaline-tolerant bacteria that could someday increase efficiency and reduce the cost of biofuel processing.

Moridis on Board of Computers & Geosciences

ESD’s George Moridis was honored by being named to the board of the journal Computers & Geosciences, an Elsevier publication that publishes high impact, original research at the interface between computer sciences and geosciences.

EBI - Call for Preproposals, Deadline 5/31/13

The 2013 call from the Energy Bioscience Institute (EBI) has been posted on EBI's website (http://www.energybiosciencesinstitute.org). The deadline for preproposals is May 31, 2013.

Modeling Fault Reactivation and Induced Seismicity

A group of ESD investigators led by Jonny Rutqvist recently conducted numerical simulation studies to assess the potential for injection-induced fault reactivation and notable seismic events associated with shale-gas hydraulic fracturing operations.

Engineering of Bacteria for Production of Methyl Ketone Biofuels from CO2

Ralstonia eutropha is a chemolithoautotrophic bacterium able to grow with organic substrates or H2 and CO2 under aerobic conditions.

LBNL-UCD Predictive Agriculture Workshop

The First Partnership Workshop of the LBNL/UC-Davis Predictive Agricultural Initiative focused on how to sustainably manage agricultural systems for a growing world population under changing environmental conditions.

A Wealth of Earth Day-Week Activities

LBNL Deputy Director Horst Simon, in a message to the Lab, announces a wealth of Lab activities related to Earth Day and Earth Week, and invites all Lab employees to learn how they can make a positive impact.

Good Tobacco: Biofuels of the Future

ESD’s Christer Jansson is featured in a video as a leader in the effort to use tobacco as a sustainable biofuel—as highlighted in the recently concluded annual ARPA-E meeting (and reported on in the March 1 edition of the New York Times).

Korneev’s Software Leads to EOR Award

ESD’s Valeri Korneev, the startup company Seismos, and Bill Shelander, Tech Transfer’s commercialization expert, recently collaborated on developing software to fix current blind spots involved in enhanced oil recovery (EOR).

Functionalizing bacterial cell surfaces with a phage protein

Functionalization of bacterial cell surfaces has the potential to introduce new activities by chemical modification. ESD’s Harry Beller, Steve Singer, and others show that a bacteriophage–receptor complex can be used to functionalize the surface of two Gram-negative proteobacteria, Escherichia coli and Ralstonia eutropha with CdSe/ZnS nanoparticles.