To achieve a fossil free society, we need to establish novel production methods for liquid transportation fuels that can be used in heavy commercial vehicles and jets. One option is to engineer the metabolism of Baker’s yeast such that instead of producing the traditional biofuel ethanol it can produce hydrocarbons that can replace traditional diesel and kerosene. This kind of engineering requires fundamental understanding of yeast metabolism. Detailed mathematical models have been developed for this purpose. Due to the high degree of conservation of metabolism between yeast and human, we can also use these models to study cancer and thereby identify novel biomarkers that can be used for early detection of disease.
A seminar with professor Jens Nielsen, Department of Biology and Biological Engineering, Chalmers University of Technology, Gothenburg, Sweden and Novo Nordisk Foundation Center for Biosustainability, Technical University of Denmark, Lyngby, Denmark.
