A multidisciplinary team of researchers at the University of Georgia and two married person innovation have been awarded a $ 15.8 million Duncan Grant over five years from the U.S. Department of Energy to re - engineer poplar trees ( Populus sp . and crossbreed ) to be used as a sustainable energy generator .
The researchers will use biotech approaches to breed the trees as a multipurpose crop that can be used for bioenergy , biomaterial , and bioproduct choice to petroleum - based textile . The grant is part of a larger $ 178 million DOE initiative to advance bioenergy technology .
“ Currently , there is a growing need for sustainable sources of not only biofuels but also bioproducts and works - based fabric . poplar tree are among the fastest growing tree diagram in the United States and are important for both carbon paper requisition and worldwide carbon cycling , ” said Robin Buell , master police detective on the subsidisation and the GRA Eminent Scholar Chair in Crop Genomics at the Center for Applied Genetic Technologies in the College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences .
The UGA grant will fund five projects involve Buell and UGA faculty confederate , include Wayne Parrott in the CAES Department of Crop and Soil Sciences ; Chung - Jui Tsai and Bob Schmitz in the Department of Genetics ; and Breeanna Urbanowicz in the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology , all in UGA ’s Franklin College of Arts and Sciences . External partner are Patrick Shih at the University of California , Berkeley , and Chris Dardick with the U.S. Department of Agriculture ’s Agricultural Research Service .
The team will commence by quantify messenger RNA transcripts in single cells — mRNA transcript are portable strands of RNA that capsule the information contained in a gene — and will wait at how the 3D deoxyribonucleic acid changes in single prison cell . From this , they will create a jail cell type - specific gene formulation and regulative mathematical function of poplar that will bring home the bacon new selective information on cistron function , Buell said .
in the end , the project aims to fabricate fresh type of poplar through transmissible modification .
“ What we propose is to genetically orchestrate poplar to make it a multipurpose crop by change its architecture and engineering it to farm dissimilar thing in the leaves and wood , ” Buell say , adding that the squad will seek to engineer several different case of poplar trees in the study to take advantage of different plant materials — such as the wood or the farewell — for different uses . “ We will return poplar tree diagram that have unlike architecture by exchange their tree diagram shape and ratio of leaves to Grant Wood . For exercise , we will make a George Walker Bush like a hydrangea , a tree determine like an apple tree , and a tree diagram like a loblolly pine . ”
Through biotechnology , plant materials harvest from the re - engineered computer architecture of the tree will be used to make products that have the potential to replace petroleum - based products . The DOE funding is supporting the enquiry and maturation of bioenergy crops , industrial microorganisms , and microbiomes . alternate sporty energy sources like bioenergy dally a key purpose in reaching the Union authorities ’s goal of a net - zero carbon paper economy by 2050 .
“ Poplar has been canvas for about 15 to 20 years by the Department of Energy as an energy crop , ” articulate Buell . “ They are tight - grow trees , and there is interest in poplar as a potential biofuel crop and for carbon copy sequestration . There could be a forerunner for K fuel in the leaves or compounds from the wood to use for polymer that are currently source from rock oil . ”
For more information : University of Georgiawww.uga.edu
