Thursday, December 22, 2011
A generally accepted, 44-year-old assumption about how certain kinds of bacteria make energy and synthesize cell materials has been shown to be incorrect by a team of scientists led by Donald Bryant, the Ernest C. Pollard Professor of Biotechnology at Penn State and a research professor in the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry at Montana State University. The research, published in the journal Science on Dec. 16, is expected to help scientists discover new ways of genetically engineering bacteria to manufacture biofuels -- energy-rich compounds derived from biological sources. Many textbooks, which cite the 44-year-old interpretation as fact, likely will be revised as a result of the new discovery. (more)
Monday, October 13, 2008
Two million tourists visit Yellowstone National Park each year to watch wildlife and view the spectacular scenery. Scientists home in on its hot springs, exploring their ecology and plumbing their scalding waters in search of highly adapted, heretofore-undiscovered microorganisms. Don Bryant, Ernest C. Pollard Professor of Biotechnology at Penn State, and David Ward, a microbial ecologist at Montana State University, found a new heat-loving bacterium that survives by transforming light into chemical energy. Bryant characterizes finding this new chlorophyll-producing microbe as "the discovery of a lifetime." (more)
