In February 2008, a consortium led by DSM that includes Abengoa Bioenergy New Technologies, Los Alamos National Laboratory and Sandia National Laboratory was awarded US$7.4 million by the DOE toward the program.

DSM and the Department of Energy, through their Cooperative Agreement, will work during the next four years to develop cost-efficient enzymes to allow for the manufacturing of commercial quantities of second generation biofuel.

As part of the project, biofuels researchers at Sandia National Laboratories have been awarded $600,000 in funding for a two-year, Department of Energy (DOE)-funded effort titled “Development of Saccharifying Enzymes for Commercial Use.”

Sandia engineer Rajat Sapra will serve as principal investigator on the project.

What we plan on doing is to take our expertise in structural and biophysical analysis, apply it to this particular type of enzymes, and help improve the properties of the enzyme through a structural and computational guided rational enzyme engineering process. Ultimately, what we’re trying to do is make better, more effective enzymes.

—Rajat Sapra

Sandia will use various spectroscopic and molecular modeling techniques that will help scientists to better understand how these enzymes break down biomass.