Love-hate Relationship of Solvent and Water Leads to Better Biomass Breakup

Science

Love-hate Relationship of Solvent and Water Leads to Better Biomass Breakup

Media contact: Kimberly Askey, [email protected], 865.576.2841 Scientists at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory used neutron scattering and supercomputing to better understand how an organic solvent and water work together to break down plant biomass, creating a pathway to significantly improve the production of renewable biofuels and bioproducts. The…

Will WellsJuly 8, 2020

Science

Titan Helps Researchers Suck Mystery Out of Cell’s ‘Vacuum Cleaners’

In the fight against cancer, cancer cells often find ways to fight back. One means is by stocking the cell membrane with proteins that pump foreign substances—including anticancer drugs—out of the cell. This trait can result in multidrug resistance that undermines the effectiveness of cancer treatment. To combat this defense…

Jonathan HinesSeptember 19, 2017

Science

Assembling Life’s Molecular Motor

Despite the grand diversity among living organisms, the molecule used to store and transmit energy within aerobic, or oxygen-using, cells is remarkably the same. From bacteria to fungi, plants, and animals, adenosine triphosphate (ATP) serves as the universal energy currency of life, fueling the processes cells need to survive and…

Jonathan HinesMay 9, 2017

Science

Titan Probes Depths of Biofuel’s Biggest Barrier

To better understand lignin, a problematic molecule for next-generation biofuel production, a team from ORNL created one of the largest biomolecular simulations to date—a 23.7-million atom system representing pretreated biomass in the presence of enzymes.

Jonathan HinesFebruary 16, 2016

Science

Researchers Build Bacteria’s Photosynthetic Engine

A team led by Klaus Schulten of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign used Titan to achieve a milestone in the field of biomolecular simulation, modeling a complete photosynthetic organelle of the bacteria Rhodobacter sphaeroides in atomic detail.

Jonathan HinesJuly 29, 2015

Science

Boosting Bioenergy

A team led by ORNL’s Jeremy Smith, the director of ORNL’s Center for Molecular Biophysics and a Governor’s Chair at the University of Tennessee, has uncovered information that could help others harvest energy from plant mass.

OLCF Staff WriterJanuary 2, 2014

Science

Researchers recruit Titan to study key molecular switch that controls cell behavior

Using computational molecular dynamics simulations, researchers at ORNL and the University of Tennessee–ORNL Joint Institute for Computational Sciences have discovered a molecular “switch” in a receptor that controls cell behavior.

OLCF Staff WriterDecember 13, 2013

Biophysics