Harnessing Yeast Breeding and Synergistic Bacteria to Boost Bioethanol Production
Event details
| Date | 19.09.2025 |
| Hour | 11:15 › 12:15 |
| Speaker | Prof. Yechezkel Kashi, Faculty of Biotechnology and Food Engineering, Technion-Israel Institute of Technology, Haifa (IL) |
| Location | Online |
| Category | Conferences - Seminars |
| Event Language | English |
BIOENGINEERING SEMINAR
Abstract:
Bioethanol is a renewable and clean energy source with an annual market size of $90 billion. Its production relies on fermentation of a carbon source to form ethanol by the yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae. While S. cerevisiae is a traditional ethanol-producing microorganism, it faces several limitations that restrict industrial efficiency and productivity.
Two approaches were employed to enhance industrial bioethanol fermentation. The first strategy focused on genetic breeding of yeast to develop improved ethanol-producing strains. Genetic breeding is a natural and effective improvement method capable of enhancing complex quantitative genetic traits controlled by multiple, often unknown, genes. By leveraging advanced quantitative gene mapping and our innovative genetic breeding technology, we successfully developed bioethanol yeast strains with enhanced fermentation performance and robustness.
The second strategy introduced a novel concept of using synergistic bacteria as additives enhancers to bioethanol fermentation. This approach represents a paradigm shift from the conventional practice of combating bacterial contamination with antibiotics. Instead, it harnesses beneficial bacterial interactions with yeast to actively enhance the fermentation process.
Overall, improving fermentation through the manipulation of both the yeast strains and their bacterial environment represents a holistic approach to enhance bioethanol production process and yield. This comprehensive strategy holds significant promise for advancing the efficiency and sustainability of biofuel production.
Bio:
Yechezkel Kashi is a Research Professor in the Faculty of Biotechnology and Food Engineering at the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology in Haifa, Israel. He was born in Raanana, Israel in 1957. He obtained M.Sc. (1985) and Ph.D. (1991) in Genetics from the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. As a graduate student supervised by Dr. Moshe Soller and Dr. Adam Friedmann he identified and characterized the Microsatellites DNA sequences as genetic markers and contributed to the study of genetic breeding by developing genome based selection platform as a replacement to conventional phenotypic selection. As a post- doctoral fellow with Dr. Arthur Horowitz at Yale, he shift his focus to study GroEL chaperoning and its function in protein folding. His structure – function studies of GroEL paved the way for important discoveries in understanding the mode of action of chaperons. On 1994 he joined the Technion and set up the Applied Genomics laboratory which is specialized in genomics and genetics studies, in the fields of food microbiology and molecular biology of bacteria and yeast, QTLs mapping, genomic typing, epidemiology of food and water pathogens, as well as in host – microbiome interactions. Dr. Kashi Yechezkel published more than 100 scientific studies. He is the Scientific founder of Kol Capital Ltd and served as the President of the Israeli Society for Microbiology (2011-2015).
Zoom link for attending remotely: https://epfl.zoom.us/j/69288255946
Instructions for 1st-year Ph.D. students planning to attend this talk, who are under EDBB’s mandatory seminar attendance rule:
IN CASE you cannot attend in-person in the room, please make sure to
Abstract:
Bioethanol is a renewable and clean energy source with an annual market size of $90 billion. Its production relies on fermentation of a carbon source to form ethanol by the yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae. While S. cerevisiae is a traditional ethanol-producing microorganism, it faces several limitations that restrict industrial efficiency and productivity.
Two approaches were employed to enhance industrial bioethanol fermentation. The first strategy focused on genetic breeding of yeast to develop improved ethanol-producing strains. Genetic breeding is a natural and effective improvement method capable of enhancing complex quantitative genetic traits controlled by multiple, often unknown, genes. By leveraging advanced quantitative gene mapping and our innovative genetic breeding technology, we successfully developed bioethanol yeast strains with enhanced fermentation performance and robustness.
The second strategy introduced a novel concept of using synergistic bacteria as additives enhancers to bioethanol fermentation. This approach represents a paradigm shift from the conventional practice of combating bacterial contamination with antibiotics. Instead, it harnesses beneficial bacterial interactions with yeast to actively enhance the fermentation process.
Overall, improving fermentation through the manipulation of both the yeast strains and their bacterial environment represents a holistic approach to enhance bioethanol production process and yield. This comprehensive strategy holds significant promise for advancing the efficiency and sustainability of biofuel production.
Bio:
Yechezkel Kashi is a Research Professor in the Faculty of Biotechnology and Food Engineering at the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology in Haifa, Israel. He was born in Raanana, Israel in 1957. He obtained M.Sc. (1985) and Ph.D. (1991) in Genetics from the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. As a graduate student supervised by Dr. Moshe Soller and Dr. Adam Friedmann he identified and characterized the Microsatellites DNA sequences as genetic markers and contributed to the study of genetic breeding by developing genome based selection platform as a replacement to conventional phenotypic selection. As a post- doctoral fellow with Dr. Arthur Horowitz at Yale, he shift his focus to study GroEL chaperoning and its function in protein folding. His structure – function studies of GroEL paved the way for important discoveries in understanding the mode of action of chaperons. On 1994 he joined the Technion and set up the Applied Genomics laboratory which is specialized in genomics and genetics studies, in the fields of food microbiology and molecular biology of bacteria and yeast, QTLs mapping, genomic typing, epidemiology of food and water pathogens, as well as in host – microbiome interactions. Dr. Kashi Yechezkel published more than 100 scientific studies. He is the Scientific founder of Kol Capital Ltd and served as the President of the Israeli Society for Microbiology (2011-2015).
Zoom link for attending remotely: https://epfl.zoom.us/j/69288255946
Instructions for 1st-year Ph.D. students planning to attend this talk, who are under EDBB’s mandatory seminar attendance rule:
IN CASE you cannot attend in-person in the room, please make sure to
- send D. Reinhard a note well ahead of time (ideally before seminar day), informing that you plan to attend the talk online, and, during seminar:
- be signed in on Zoom with a recognizable user name (not any alias making it difficult or impossible to identify you).
Practical information
- Informed public
- Free
Organizer
- Prof. Sahand Rahi, Institute of Physics & Institute of Bioengineering
Contact
- Institute of Bioengineering (IBI), Dietrich REINHARD