SBIR-STTR Award

Intellectual Merit: This Small Business Innovation Research Phase I project takes a novel approach to produce improved maize cultivars for bioenergy applications. Lignin in cellulosic biomass creates a barrier that limits conversion of cellulose into biofuels. In the proposed approach, the lignin in crop cultivars is modified to improve conversion to liquid fuels. The Company previously demonstrated the approach in hybrid poplar. The Company has now produced 37 transgenic maize lines with the same lignin modification. The Company is characterizing the biomass composition in the stover (non-seed portions of the maize plant) from these lines, including lignin content, cellulose content, hemi-cellulose content, and protein content. The Company will conduct tests on several plants from each transgenic line for efficiency of conversion of the biomass into ethanol by gentle pretreatment methods. The Company will also conduct field trials with seed collected in the greenhouse from the 37 transgenic maize lines crossed to important maize inbred lines. The field-grown plants will be crossed to generate third-generation seed, and the fodder of the plants analyzed for biomass content and digestibility. The stover of these transgenic maize plants is expected to have increased cellulose extractability and significantly higher rates of conversion to ethanol. The broader impact/commercial potential of this project will be the development of new, more cost-effective feedstock cultivars of maize for the bio-based products industry. This project will also demonstrate the applicability of this new lignin-modification technology for improving bioenergy feedstocks for both annual and perennial crops. The treatment of cellulosic biomass for sugar extraction for production of biofuels and bioproducts is a challenging and expensive engineering issue. Pretreatment adds as much as 20% to the cost of biofuel production, and can be a limiting factor for economic and environmental viability of the new bioenergy industry. The lignin modification technology developed at Lignolink will be shown to improve the commercial viability of biofuels production by increasing sugar release from biomass, using milder, more- environmentally-friendly pretreatment techniques. The market potential for technology that improves biomass for pretreatment and sugar release is large. The ability to decrease biofuels production costs by improving biomass processing efficiency will help ensure profitability in biofuels production. Corn growers will have a new market for stover, which may surpass the market for first generation biofuels from corn seed. Scientific and technological understanding of a novel means for lignin modification in biomass feedstock plants will also be advanced

This Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase II project will further demonstrate the potential of LignoLink's technology for improving cellulosic biomass crops as feedstocks for the bioenergy and animal feed industries. Lignocellulosic biomass is a major renewable feedstock. A critical step in the conversion of lignocellulosic biomass to energy is enzymatic digestion of the biomass to sugars. Lignin provides plant strength and is the primary and most challenging barrier to accessing and extracting cellulose for conversion to sugars. The novel Lignolink approach helps overcome this significant challenge by inserting proteins into the lignin structure of biomass to greatly enhance the digestibility of lignocellulose. The Lignolink modification of the lignin structure provides the desired benefits without hurting the strength or the health of the plant during normal growth. This is a key breakthrough. Small scale trials in the NSF Phase I SBIR resulted in increases of over 50% in yields of fermentable sugars from poplar wood and corn-stover biomass, without affecting plant fitness. In Phase II research the scope of the trials will be expanded in maize and poplar, both in the number and type of cell wall proteins being tested and in the scale of the trials with the best performing lines. This will demonstrate the general applicability of the technology in both annual cereal crops and in perennial woody biomass sources, which represent the full spectrum of cellulosic biomass feedstocks. The broader impact/commercial potential of this project extends from bioenergy to agriculture and biomaterials industries. Biobased products are an attractive green and sustainable long-term alternative to petroleum based products. Lignolink's technology, has the potential to make cellulosic biofuels more commercially viable and more environmentally friendly by permitting the use of milder pretreatment conditions leading to greater product yields and efficiency. Pretreatment is the largest single cost in biofuels production, and can be a significant limiting factor in economic viability. Increases in yields of sugar from biomass of 50% or more through facilitating biomass treatability itself holds great potential to improve commercial viability of the use of cellulosic biomass for energy, specialty chemicals and biomaterials and thus should facilitate development of economically viable commercial production technology. Lignolink's technology could similarly improve biomass for use as feed for livestock, by improving breakdown during digestion in animals. This could increase efficiency of nutrient extraction, thereby reducing the necessary land base and environmental impact of animal agriculture.