Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory

Current bioethanol production from lignocellulosic biomass is a relatively inefficient process requiring energy-intensive chemical and physical pretreatments (Fig.1). The identification of robust cellulolytic enzymes (e.g., cellulases and hemicellulases) from lignocellulolytic microbial communities is a necessity to achieve the ambitious goal to replace 30percent of the national petroleum based gasoline with bioethanol by 2030.