Plugging Microbial Activities and Genomes into the Energy Grid.

Summary

An Office of Science sponsored  symposium at the May general meeting of the American Society for Microbiology (ASM) in Philadelphia discussed microbial genomics and systems biology research aimed at the development of new biofuels and bioenergy sources.  Tim Donohue and Jennie Reed of the DOE Great Lakes Bioenergy Research Center at the University of Wisconsin convened the symposium.  The symposium also featured Martin Keller of the DOE Bioenergy Sciences Center at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, James Liao of the UCLA-DOE Institute of Genomics and Proteomics, and Andreas Schirmer of LS9, Inc., a biotechnology company focusing on biofuels research.  Donohue, Keller, Liao, and Schirmer also participated in a press conference at the meeting highlighting the symposium.  Follow up news articles appeared on the websites Genomeweb.com and Greenwire on May 19th, and further print articles are expected to follow.