The Center for Bioenergy Innovation (CBI), led by Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), is pursuing a variety of new technologies to cost effectively create fuels and products currently made from petroleum. Through basic science research on dedicated bioenergy crops (e.g., poplar and switchgrass) and a suite of engineered microbes, CBI researchers are advancing the domestication and design of plants and microbes to produce advanced biofuels and bioproducts, including hydrocarbons for jet fuel and chemical feedstocks for plastic precursors.
Specifically, the CBI team is accelerating progress toward identifying and using key plant genes for growth, yield, composition, and sustainability traits to lower feedstock costs and improve year-round feedstock supplies. Additionally, CBI is developing consolidated bioprocessing (CBP), a process in which microbes simultaneously digest the biomass and convert it to biofuels and bioproducts without added enzymes. CBP combines multiple approaches and tools to overcome industrially relevant barriers to using microbes in biomass deconstruction and conversion, including brief milling during deconstruction (i.e., cotreatment).

Natural Variation in Biomass Yield. Logs harvested from a CBI research plot show that poplar trees with different individual genotypes grew at varying rates. CBI researcher Wellington Muchero is identifying genes from naturally occurring trees that produce more biomass to create new tree progeny with uniform biomass under varying conditions. [Courtesy ORNL]
Ultimately, CBI aims to:
- Create high-yielding bioenergy crops, which display uniform productivity and increased sustainability, by harnessing natural diversity via genomic selection in two perennial feedstocks, poplar and switchgrass.
- Engineer CBP microbes to produce commercially relevant quantities of advanced biofuels.
- More completely utilize all plant cell wall components, specifically lignin, to funnel and improve biological production of coproduct chemicals and novel materials.
Research Focus Areas
CBI’s research targets three research focus areas: (1) improving sustainable biomass feedstocks, (2) enhancing biomass deconstruction and conversion through CBP into specialty fuels, and (3) transforming lignin residues into valuable bioproducts. An underlying theme is to accelerate the domestication of bioenergy-relevant plants and microbes to enable innovations across the bioenergy supply chain by understanding and manipulating complex traits controlled by multiple genes.
Sustainable Biomass Feedstocks. In the last two years, CBI has identified, characterized, and utilized key plant genes for yield, cell wall composition, and sustainability traits as a means of achieving lower feedstock costs. Focusing on native perennial plants, such as poplar and switchgrass, provides immediate advantages in sustainability, including fewer chemical inputs and better soil conservation. CBI researchers are harnessing the vast natural diversity in these two dedicated bioenergy crops to uncover the genetic determinants of complex traits related to cell wall chemistry, disease resistance, favorable mycorrhizal colonization, and drought tolerance via genomewide association studies (GWAS), genomic selection, and genomic editing approaches to design uniform high-yielding, high-quality, resource-efficient feedstocks. CBI’s overarching sustainability goals are to discover and develop poplar and switchgrass genotypes with superior water-use efficiency, nitrogen-use efficiency, and pathogen resistance. CBI researchers are using these genotypes in genomic selection programs to discover and test key genes and mechanisms underlying these important sustainability traits and to characterize and deploy beneficial plant microbes to increase the yield stability of plants under low-input and environmentally challenging agricultural conditions. Recent advancements in plant phenotyping are being combined with artificial intelligence–based genomic selection approaches and CRISPR gene editing tools to provide innovative systems biology platforms for identifying unique biotechnological traits and developing improved, sustainable nonfood bioenergy crops.

Consolidated Bioprocessing (CBP) and Cotreatment Paradigm. CBP combines the three biologically mediated steps for biomass processing (cellulase production, enzymatic hydrolysis, and microbial fermentation) into a single operation, thereby eliminating the need for added enzymes and pretreatment. CBP implementation requires microbes that can produce a functional cellulase system while generating advanced fuels at high yields and concentrations. [Courtesy ORNL]

Creating Value-Added Products. CBI is generating
commercially attractive products from lignin residues,
thereby increasing the cost effectiveness of biofuels and
bioproducts. One example is these lignin-derived pellets,
which can be used to create three-dimensional objects
through computer-controlled printing. [Courtesy ORNL]
Finally, CBI researchers are employing biological funneling to produce the chemical precursors for plastics. In this process, microbial biocatalysts are designed to (1) exhibit ligninolytic aromatic-catabolic activities, (2) funnel heterogeneous aromatic monomers to central aromatic intermediates, and (3) produce target chemical feedstocks from lignin via atom-efficient transformations. CBI targets three lignin-derived products (cis,cis-muconic acid; 2-pyrone-4,6-dicarboxylic acid; and α-ketoadipate) that can be cost effectively converted into precursors for commodity polymers such as adipic and terephthalic acids.
Industry Interactions
CBI seeks to form important industrial relationships, disseminate CBI research results, gain feedback on industrial bottlenecks and concerns, and generate information about commercial opportunities including collaborations. Significant interactions have occurred with various companies including DSM; Forage Genetics International; Gevo; Commercial Aviation Alternative Fuels Initiative (CAAFI); White Dog Labs, Inc.; and Phenotype Screening Corporation. In addition, CBI, DOE’s Joint Genome Institute, and LanzaTech are completing a collaboration to release the genome sequences of 200 to 300 industrial clostridial species.
CBI intellectual property (IP) is disclosed to CBI’s Commercialization Council, which consists of technology transfer representatives from each CBI partner institution. The council reviews new CBI-funded inventions by considering their technical merit and commercial potential in order to develop an IP strategy and share licensing leads. Each owner institution protects its CBI inventions according to its standard practices and coordinates any joint IP. In fiscal year 2019, CBI partners submitted 10 invention disclosures, six provisional patent applications, four utility patent applications, and five issued patents.
Education and Outreach

Bioenergy Lesson Plans. Students measure the sugar content of various liquids using a refractometer. Connections are made between the chemical composition of biomass and the simple
sugars used to make ethanol. [Courtesy ORNL]
CBI Partners
- Oak Ridge National Laboratory (Oak Ridge, Tennessee; lead institution)
- Colorado State University (Fort Collins)
- Dartmouth College (Hanover, New Hampshire)
- GreenWood Resources, Inc. (Portland, Oregon)
- Massachusetts Institute of Technology (Cambridge)
- National Renewable Energy Laboratory (Golden, Colorado)
- Noble Research Institute (Ardmore, Oklahoma)
- The Pennsylvania State University (State College)
- University of California (Riverside)
- University of Colorado (Boulder)
- University of Georgia (Athens)
- University of North Texas (Denton)
- University of Tennessee (Knoxville)
- University of Wisconsin (Madison)
- West Virginia University (Morgantown)
CBI Contacts
- https://cbi.ornl.gov/
- Oak Ridge National Laboratory
Oak Ridge, TN 37830 - Gerald Tuskan, tuskanga@ornl.gov