Team studying how to make biofuels from E. coli

A team led by University of Colorado Boulder has won a five-year, $9.2 million grant for research on how to manipulate E. coli to produce cost-competitive biofuels.

With a grant from the U.S. Department of Energy, the team will use a nonpathogenic strain of E. coli to pinpoint what part of its genome can be used to make biofuels or other chemicals at a low cost.

The research team is led by Ryan Gill, who is a fellow at CU’s Renewable and Sustainable Energy Institute. The team also includes scientists from the National Renewable Energy Laboratory and the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.