image: Biofuels are, in fact, toxic to the very organisms that produce them. Normal yeast cells producing ethanol die once ethanol begins reaching high levels (left panel; dead cells stain blue). However, with few modifications, yeast can be strengthened (right panel) to withstand and make almost twice the amount of biofuel in the same amount of time. Remarkably, these enhancements also extend to the production of potential second generation biofuels and the utilization of second-generation feedstocks. This material relates to a paper that appeared in the Oct. 3, 2014 issue of Science, published by AAAS. The paper, by Felix H. Lam at Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, MA, and colleagues was titled, 'Engineering alcohol tolerance in yeast.' view more
Credit: [Credit: Felix Lam]