Systems Biology for Energy and the Environment
The Genomic Science program pursues fundamental research to understand, predict, manipulate, and design plant and microbial systems for innovations in renewable energy, insights into environmental processes, and biotechnological breakthroughs supporting the U.S. bioeconomy.
News & Funding
Register for EMSL Summer School: Demystifying Multiomics with Data Science, July 24 to 28, 2023
May 1, 2023
Register for EMSL Summer School 2023
View more
New Report: Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning for Bioenergy Research: Opportunities and Challenge
Apr 14, 2023
Report of a joint BER-BETO workshop on artificial intelligence and machine learning
View more
New Report Available From the Structural Biology Community
Mar 22, 2023
Genomes to Structure and Function Workshop Report 2022 Released
View more
DOE Announces $150 Million for Research on the Science Foundations for Energy Earthshots
Mar 21, 2023
A webinar on this opportunity will be held on March 27th at 12:30 p.m. EST.
View more
DOE Accepting Applications: Undergraduate Internships and Visiting Faculty
Mar 20, 2023
SULI, CCI, and VFP applications are due 5:00 p.m. Eastern Standard Time on Thursday, May 25, 2023.
View more
DOE Announces $590 Million to Renew Bioenergy Research Center Funding
Mar 20, 2023
Funding to Four Bioenergy Research Centers Will Help Strengthen Diversity of Domestic Clean Energy Sources, Enhance Our Energy Security, and Revitalize Rural Economies
View more
Bioenergy
Providing the foundational genomics-based knowledge needed to produce and deconstruct renewable plant biomass and convert it to sustainable fuels, chemicals, and other bioproducts.
Biosystems Design
Accelerating the ability to securely design, build, and control plants and microbes for beneficial purposes such as clean energy, biomaterials, and carbon sequestration.
Environmental Microbiome
Developing a process-level understanding of how plant and soil microbial communities impact the cycling and fate of carbon, nutrients, and contaminants in the environment.
Enabling Capabilities
Computing and Cyberinfrastructure
Open-access and integrated computational and bioinformatic capabilities tailored to large-scale data science for research on plants, microbes, and their communities
Biomolecular Characterization and Imaging Science
Imaging and measurement technologies enabling visualization of the relationships among biomolecules, cellular compartments, and higher-order biological systems
DOE Scientific User Facilities
Integrated capabilities across user facilities and resources for genome sequencing and analysis, DNA design and synthesis, molecular sciences, structural biology, and imaging
Bioenergy Research Centers
Four Bioenergy Research Centers—each led by a DOE national laboratory or top university—take distinctive approaches to the common goal of improving and scaling up advanced biofuel and bioproduct production processes.
The multidisciplinary teams are tackling fundamental science challenges in:
- Sustainability
- Feedstock development
- Deconstruction and separation
- Conversion
Their research is identifying the genomic underpinnings of complex plant traits in promising bioenergy crops and streamlining deconstruction processes to funnel plant components into defined process streams. The centers are designing new pathways in microbes to convert plant biomass to a range of fuels, chemicals, and bioproducts. They also are developing the agronomic understanding needed to sustainably manage and produce bioenergy crops on marginal lands.
Select BRC Highlights
First demonstration of targeted gene editing in the bioenergy grass Miscanthus
Engineered auxotrophic Agrobacterium strains improve plant transformation
Strong climate mitigation potential of switchgrass grown on marginal lands
Yeast engineered to produce triacetic acid lactone from sorghum
