DavidM/20100614: Difference between revisions

On to my current work, where I try to balance ideals with realities. To pay the bills, refine technical skills and spread wiki, I work part-time at Concordia's Fungal Genomics lab.  That's right, the programme in CED led to supporting scientists working on things like "directed evolution."  The goal of the group is to find more efficient enzymes for biofuels. Today's [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethanol#As_a_fuel ethanol] solutions hardly make sense from an environmental perspective, but growing cellulosic material — trees — is beneficial in the [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_cycle carbon cycle]. Fungi are pervasive in nature as part of the cycle of breaking things down, necessary to create efficient biofuels. So our group analyzes tens of thousands of digital fungal genomic samples, searching for something efficient at breaking down cellulosic material, and when a likely candidate is found — they grow it. It's pretty cool stuff, and breakthroughs have tremendous potential. Wiki is successfully used for internal communications and for the project's websites.