We’re excited to announce that The North Lab, Patrice Hamel Lab (OSU Molgen), Hannah Shafaat Lab (OSU Chemistry), and Ajay Shah Lab (OSU FABE) have received the OSU Presidential Research Excellence Award.
The goal of the team is to engineer the photosynthetic alga, Chlamydomonas reinhardtii, and the photosynthetic bacterium, Rhodopseudomonas palustris, for the production of renewable hydrogen gas and ethylene gas from abundant sunlight, carbon dioxide, and plant biomass. Hydrogen is the renewable fuel of the future, and ethylene the industrial platform chemical society depends upon for the production of plastics, textiles, and building materials.
Using engineered enzyme catalysts from the North and Shafaat Labs, this project makes a major leap forward in the production of hydrogen and ethylene, because oxygenic phototrophs like Chlamydomonas can get all the electrons they need from water for the production of these biofuels.