News Brief
June 12, 2017 
RICHLAND, Wash. - Scientists are taking their cues from fungi in the digestive tracts of cows, goats and sheep in the search for new ways to create sustainable fuels and medicines.
It turns out that fungal enzymes in herbivores play well together, teaming up to form cellulosomes - large protein structures made up of several enzymes. While each enzyme specializes in a certain kind of reaction, a cellulosome brings several of the tools together in one structure adept at transforming lignocellulose - the primary building block of plant cell walls - into sugars. It's like the fungal version of an all-purpose jackknife, with all the tools handy for a variety of tasks. Creating the sugars is a key step toward faster, cheaper creation of biofuels from biomass like corn stalks and switchgrass.
The work, published in Nature Microbiology, was led by Michelle O'Malley of the University of California at Santa Barbara. To do the work, she drew on the resources of 2 D.O.E. Office of Science user facilities, the Joint Genome Institute and EMSL, Environmental Molecular Sciences Lab, through the FICUS program.
Among the authors at EMSL and DOE's Pacific Northwest National Lab were Heather Brewer, Samuel Purvine, Aaron Wright and Scott Baker. More information is accessible via reports from UCSB, JGI and EMSL.
Tags: Energy, Fundamental Science, EMSL, Biomass, Biofuel, Microbiology
EMSL, the Environmental Molecular Sciences Lab, is a D.O.E. Office of Science User Facility. Located at Pacific Northwest National Lab in Richland, Wash., EMSL offers an open, collaborative environment for scientific discovery to researchers around the world. Its integrated computational and experimental resources enable researchers to realize important scientific insights and create new technologies. Follow EMSL on Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter.
Interdisciplinary teams at Pacific Northwest National Lab address many of America's most pressing issues in energy, the environment and national security through advances in basic and applied science. Founded in 1965, PNNL employs 4,400 staff and has an yearly budget of nearly $1 billion. It is managed by Battelle for the D.O.E.'s Office of Science. As the single biggest supporter of basic research in the physical sciences in the United States, the Office of Science is working to address some of the most pressing challenges of our time. For more information on PNNL, visit the PNNL News Center, or follow PNNL on Facebook, Google+, Instagram, LinkedIn and Twitter.
