If you’re a regular around here, you probably know that we prefer renewable electricity for powering vehicles. This usually involves battery storage, though. While battery technology has gotten to the point where it’s viable to do things like electric cars, boats, trucks, and even some planes, the relatively low energy density of batteries will be an obstacle to many applications for years to come, and for some applications, perhaps decades.
“Duckweed grows fast,” said Brookhaven Lab biochemist John Shanklin, the team’s leader. “It has only tiny stems and roots — so most of its biomass is in leaf-like fronds that grow on the surface of ponds worldwide. Our engineering creates high oil content in all that biomass. Growing and harvesting this engineered duckweed in batches and extracting its oil could be an efficient pathway to renewable and sustainable oil production.
The origins of this project lie in the investigations carried out by William S. Hillman and his team from Brookhaven Lab’s Biology Department back in the 1970s on duckweeds. Subsequently, staff members from the same department worked together with Martienssen’s crew at Cold Spring Harbor to formulate a highly efficient strategy for expressing foreign genes into duckweed plants as well as techniques to selectively inhibit expression of natural duckweed genes based on prerequisite conditions.
“Biofuels are a versatile tool because they have the immediate potential to power our ships, trains, airlines and heavy-duty vehicles—a huge contributor to total carbon emissions—with a significantly reduced carbon footprint,” said US Secretary of Energy Jennifer M. Granholm. “DOE investments are helping to build out a domestic bioenergy supply chain that increases America’s energy independence, creates jobs, and accelerates the adoption of cleaner fuels for our transportation needs.
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