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Bioenergy

Dan Jacobson, ORNLPeopleScience

Laying the Groundwork for a New ‘Green Revolution’

In 2015, all member states of the United Nations pledged to pursue the 17 Sustainable Development Goals set forth by the UN General Assembly in its 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. The goals serve as a framework to tackle many of the world’s challenges, ranging from practical issues like infrastructure…
Coury Turczyn
August 10, 2020
Science

A New Method for Unraveling Complex Gene Interactions

The first step for biologists who want to develop new, more efficient biofuels is to understand the genetic underpinnings of plants that can be digested by microbes into chemical compounds. One species in particular, the black cottonwood tree, or Populus trichocarpa (poplar tree), has long been a focus of scientists…
Will Wells
May 18, 2020
Science

AI for Plant Breeding in an Ever-Changing Climate

How might artificial intelligence (AI) impact agriculture, the food industry, and the field of bioengineering? Dan Jacobson, a research and development staff member in the Biosciences Division at the US Department of Energy’s (DOE’s) Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), has a few ideas. For the past 5 years, Jacobson and…
Rachel McDowell
November 13, 2019
The fungus Laccaria bicolor, in green, is shown colonizing the root of a natural host Populus trichocarpa. A better understanding of plant-fungi symbioses could lead to engineering plant-fungal associations and improve nitrogen and nutrition uptake along with plants’ resistance to drought and pathogens, according to an Oak Ridge National Laboratory-led research team. Credit: Jessy Labbe/Oak Ridge National Laboratory, U.S. Dept. of Energy and Kevin Cope/University of Wisconsin, MadisonScience

ORNL Scientists Make Fundamental Discovery to Creating Better Crops

Written by: Stephanie Seay, Oak Ridge National Laboratory A team of scientists led by the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory have discovered the specific gene that controls an important symbiotic relationship between plants and soil fungi, and successfully facilitated the symbiosis in a plant that typically resists it.…
Will Wells
July 22, 2019
Science

Breaching the Biomass Problem

In a farewell nod to Titan, scheduled to be decommissioned in August 2019, we present a short series of features highlighting some of Titan’s impactful contributions to scientific research. https://vimeo.com/307039163 A visualization of a cellulose fiber (green) interacting with lignin (brown). Using supercomputers like the OLCF’s Cray XK7 Titan, ORNL…
Jonathan Hines
December 20, 2018
Science

A Novel Method for Comparing Plant Genes

A map of gene expression correlation triangles, with positive correlations (blue edges) between Kalanchoë genes (dark green nodes) and pineapple genes (yellow nodes) and negative correlations (red edges) between Kalanchoë or pineapple genes and Arabidopsis genes (light green nodes). During normal photosynthesis, plants capture sunlight and carry out respiration during…
Rachel McDowell
February 27, 2018