Augmentation of Biotech Products
Biodiesel augmentation
Biofuels production from bacteria, microalgae and yeast offer the potential way to solve the major challenges facing by other approaches today. Biodiesel formed particularly from microalgae seem to be the most promising renewable biofuel that would efficiently replace the other available fossil fuels such as petroleum products. Like plants, algae utilize sunlight to produce oil but they do so more efficiently than crop plants. Oil production by microalgae greatly exceeds the oil productivity of the many best producing oil crops and therefore, the algal biomass is one of the emerging sources of sustainable energy. Moreover, the biomass doubling time for microalgae during exponential growth can be 3 to 5 hrs, which is significantly faster than the doubling time for oil crops. Algal groups such as diatoms and cyanobacteria have been found to contain high level of lipid. These microalgae with high lipid content are of great interest in search for sustainable feedstock for production of biodiesel. But the economics of producing biodiesel need to improve substantially to make it competitive with conventional petrodiesel. There are many serious major problems have to be solved before commercialization of biodiesel such as growth and amount of oil produced. Producing low-cost microalgal biodiesel requires in-depth study on algal physiology through functional genomics, comparative genomics, metabolomics, metabolic pathway reconstruction, simulation and modeling. Transferring genes responsible for biodiesel production to yeast is also gaining importance.Currently we are focusing on: