A consortium that includes The Samuel Roberts Noble Foundation won a bid from the Department of Energy (DOE) for a $125 million bioenergy research center.

The BioEnergy Science Center (BESC), one of three funded by the DOE, will employ a national collaboration of private and public institutions to perform cutting edge research aimed at understanding how to convert plants, including switchgrass and poplar trees, into liquid fuels. The announcement was made by Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman today at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C.

"These centers will provide the transformational science needed for bioenergy breakthroughs to advance President Bush's goal of making cellulosic ethanol cost-competitive with gasoline by 2012 and assist in reducing America's gasoline consumption by 20 percent in 10 years," Bodman said. "The collaborations of academic, corporate and national laboratory researchers represented by these centers are truly impressive, and I am very encouraged by the potential they hold for advancing America's energy security."

The consortium which includes the Noble Foundation is headed by Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) in Tennessee and brings together molecular and agricultural scientists and industry experts from the University of Tennessee, Dartmouth College, the University of Georgia, the Georgia Institute of Technology, the National Renewable Energy Laboratory and companies ArborGen in Summerville, S.C., Diversa (now Verenium Corp.) in San Diego, Calif., and Mascoma in Cambridge, Mass. The team also includes seven individual researchers from across the country. ORNL's Martin Keller will serve as director for the center.

"Today is a significant moment in the emergence of our nation's biofuels industry. The DOE's investment in these three centers highlights the United States' commitment to develop lignocellulosic biomass for the production of biofuels," said Michael A. Cawley, President and Chief Executive Officer of the Noble Foundation. "The Noble Foundation's pursuit of a broad, agriculture enhancement mission has resulted in the development of complementary expertise in the areas of plant biology, forage development, and production agriculture, which permits us to address complex research problems from many different perspectives, but in a coordinated effort. This capability places the Noble Foundation at the forefront of the biomass to biofuels movement."

A major mission of the BESC will be to understand the nature and formation of plant cell walls, an essential step in the development of new methods of processing plants into biofuel. The strategy involves breaking down the lattice of cellulose, hemicellulose and lignin - substances which define the cell walls of all plants - into simple sugars. These sugars can then be processed into fuel. To date, no cost-effective bioprocessing methods for cellulose-based bioenergy sources have been developed. The BESC will focus on:

• Modifying plant cell walls to reduce their resistance to breakdown with a focus on the poplar tree and switchgrass, a native Oklahoma grass that can be easily grown in most of the U.S. Such modification would decrease or eliminate the need for costly chemical pretreatments now required; and
• Consolidating bioprocessing, which involves the use of microorganisms to break down plant matter through a one-step conversion process of biomass into biofuels.

Of the DOE funding, the Noble Foundation will receive about $9 million throughout the next five years, representing the largest portion of funding directly related to the plant science component in the consortium. Seven of the Noble Foundation's 18 principal investigators will receive funding as part of the center, including Drs Rick Dixon, Joe Bouton, Kelly Craven, Rick Nelson, Malay Saha, Michael Udvardi and Zengyu Wang. Noble Foundation Genomics Facility Manager Yuhong Tang, Ph.D., and Senior Research Associate Fang Chen, Ph.D., will also be a part of the funded program.

The Noble Foundation projects will address a broad spectrum of basic science issues surrounding the use of switchgrass as a significant contributor to the biofuels industry, with major emphasis on understanding how to deconstruct the cell walls of this plant to yield sugars for subsequent fermentation. They will also consider plant performance and sustainability. The approaches taken at the Noble Foundation will include genetic transformation, lignin and endophyte research, development of genomics resources, gene mapping and cultivar development.

"Together, Noble Foundation scientists are working to solve the issues that concern the use of switchgrass as a biofuel," said Richard Dixon, Senior Vice President and Director of the Plant Biology Division at the Noble Foundation. "We believe our efforts will ultimately provide improved bioenergy crops with enhanced yield and processing efficiency, and will lead to discoveries that will impact both our nation and our world."

The Noble Foundation's efforts to assist the biofuels industry have been ongoing throughout the past two years and impact a range of feedstock development matters, including creating high-yielding bioenergy crops, developing crop production and management plans for agricultural producers, and engineering feedstocks tailored to specific ethanol conversion processes.

Earlier this month, Oklahoma Governor Brad Henry signed legislation that created the Oklahoma Bioenergy Center (OBC), which unites the Noble Foundation, the University of Oklahoma and Oklahoma State University to work on breaking down barriers and facilitate technologies to create a flourishing bioenergy industry in Oklahoma.

"The Noble Foundation is playing a pivotal role in the creation of the biofuels industry at the state and national levels," said David Fleischaker, Secretary of Energy for Oklahoma. "The Noble Foundation's work, both in the scientific research and with the state's agricultural producers, addresses the entire value chain from basic gene discovery research to hands-on interaction with our farmers and ranchers. We are pleased to have the Noble Foundation contributing to Oklahoma's biofuels effort."

The other two DOE bioenergy centers will be located in Madison, Wis. and Berkeley, Calif. Each consortium involves numerous universities, national laboratories and private companies. The centers, each to be financed by $25 million a year, are designed to be operational by Sept. 1, 2009. For more information on the DOE Bioenergy Science Center, its partners and facilities, see www.bioenergycenter.org.

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News Release Issued: June 27, 2007

The Samuel Roberts Noble Foundation, Inc. (www.noble.org), headquartered in Ardmore, Okla., is a nonprofit organization conducting agricultural, forage improvement and plant biology research; assisting farmers and ranchers through educational and consultative agricultural programs; and providing grants to nonprofit charitable, educational and health organizations.