Biofuels growth

Because the Evening Primrose is a biannual, the stem shoots up only in the second year of growth. In the first year, a taproot is put down. In the second year a sprout shoots up. Producing a biomass material only every other year is a definite drawback to its use as a biofuel however, the density of its xylem material is significantly greater than that of the other candidate plants, actually giving the evening primrose a competitive output. 

Here the typical example is the inhibitor effect of ethanol on yeast growth. Considerable efforts are made by the biocompanies to develop yeast strains that are tolerant to high ethanol concentrations since this will give considerable savings in, e.g., production of biofuel by fermentation. 

Roach, D.R., Khatibi, P.A., Bischoff, K.M., Hughes, S.R. et al. (2013) Bacteriophage-encoded lytic enzymes control growth of contaminating Lactobacillus found in fuel ethanol fermentations. Biotechnol. Biofuels, 6, 20. 

Yeast was the first microbial host used by mankind for biotransformation of raw materials, and it marked the early developments of industrial biotechnology. Initially, Saccharomyces cerevisiae and closely related species were used because of their high fermentative capacity and based on the vast experience from alcoholic beverage production. While a high fermentation rate is favorable for the production of bioethanol and other primary metabolites, it implicates disadvantages for growth-coupled production. Consequently, a number of other yeasts have been developed for the production of biofuels, biochemicals, lipids, or recombinant proteins. 

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