Twenty-Second Symposium on Biotechnology for Fuels and Chemicals

In Biotechnology for Fuels and Chemicals: The Twenty-Second Symposium, leading US and international researchers from academia, industry, and government present state-of-the-art papers on how bioengineering is being used to produce fuels and chemicals that are economically competitive. The program ranged from a discussion of feedstock production, modification, and characterization, to an examination of new bio/catalysts using enzyme, microbial, and plant biochemistries, as well as genetic engineering. Additional topics include: the conversion of plant components via integration of microbiology, biochemistry, and chemistry with engineering separations, and hybrid systems; the manufacture and use of enzymes; and recent developments in the integrated production and scale-up of chemicals from biological rather than petrochemical routes. The field is clearly in an expansion mode, and the ideas and techniques described will play an important role in developing new biological processes for producing fuels and chemicals on a large scale, and in reducing pollution, waste disposal problems, and the impact on global climate change. Cutting-edge and authoritative, Biotechnology for Fuels and Chemicals: The Twenty-Second Symposium provides an excellent overview of current research and development in the production of commodity fuels and chemicals via biological transformation.