Fueling the future with fungal genomics

Abstract

Fungi play important roles across the range of current and future biofuel production processes. From crop/feedstock health to plant biomass saccharification, enzyme production to bioprocesses for producing ethanol, higher alcohols, or future hydrocarbon biofuels, fungi are involved. Research and development are underway to understand the underlying biological processes and improve them to make bioenergy production efficient on an industrial scale. Genomics is the foundation of the systems biology approach that is being used to accelerate the research and development efforts across the spectrum of topic areas that impact biofuels production. In this review, we discuss past, current, and future advances made possible by genomic analyses of the fungi that impact plant/feedstock health, degradation of lignocellulosic biomass, and fermentation of sugars to ethanol, hydrocarbon biofuels, and renewable chemicals.