High-energy-density, green, safe batteries are highly desirable for meeting the rapidly growing needs of portable electronics. The incomplete oxidation of sugars mediated by one or a few enzymes in enzymatic fuel cells ...

The hydrogen economy presents an appealing energy future but its implementation must solve numerous problems ranging from low-cost sustainable production, high-density storage, costly infrastructure, to eliminating safety concern. The use of renewable carbohydrate as a high-density hydrogen carrier and energy source for hydrogen production is possible due to emerging cell-free synthetic biology technology—cell-free synthetic pathway biotransformation (SyPaB). Assembly of numerous enzymes and co-enzymes in vitro can create complicated set of biological reactions or pathways that microorganisms or catalysts cannot complete, for example, C₆H₁₀O₅ (aq) + 7 H₂O (l) à 12 H₂ (g) + 6 CO₂ (g) (PLoS One 2007, 2:e456). Thanks to 100% selectivity of enzymes, modest reaction conditions, and high-purity of generated hydrogen, carbohydrate is a promising hydrogen carrier for end users. Gravimetric density of carbohydrate is 14.8 H₂ mass% if water can be recycled from proton exchange membrane fuel cells or 8.33% H₂ mass% without water recycling. Renewable carbohydrate can be isolated from plant biomass or would be produced from a combination of solar electricity/hydrogen and carbon dioxide fixation mediated by high-efficiency artificial photosynthesis mediated by SyPaB. The construction of this carbon-neutral carbohydrate economy would address numerous sustainability challenges, such as electricity and hydrogen storage, CO₂ fixation and long-term storage, water conservation, transportation fuel production, plus feed and food production....

Background Thermostable enzymes from thermophilic microorganisms are playing more and more important roles in molecular biology R&D and industrial applications. However, over-production of recombinant soluble proteins ...

Background Cell-free protein synthesis (CFPS) is a rapid and high throughput technology for obtaining proteins from their genes. The primary energy source ATP is regenerated from the secondary energy source through substrate ...

Decreasing lignin content of plant biomass by genetic engineering is believed to mitigate biomass recalcitrance and improve saccharification efficiency of plant biomass. In this study, we compared two different pretreatment ...

Background Energy efficiency analysis for different biomass-utilization scenarios would help make more informed decisions for developing future biomass-based transportation systems. Diverse biofuels produced from biomass ...