{"id":217595,"date":"2025-07-11T05:02:59","date_gmt":"2025-07-11T10:02:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2025\/07\/plants-engineered-for-optimal-biofuel-production"},"modified":"2025-07-11T05:02:59","modified_gmt":"2025-07-11T10:02:59","slug":"plants-engineered-for-optimal-biofuel-production","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2025\/07\/plants-engineered-for-optimal-biofuel-production","title":{"rendered":"Plants engineered for optimal biofuel production"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/plants-engineered-for-optimal-biofuel-production.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Arabidopsis may seem like a simple plant, but at the University of Missouri, plant biochemist Jay Thelen is using it as a powerful model to explore ways to boost oil production\u2014an important step toward creating more sustainable, plant-based energy sources.<\/p>\n<p>To meet the increasing global demand for biofuels, scientists are already modifying <a href=\"https:\/\/phys.org\/tags\/plant+genes\/\" rel=\"tag\" class=\"\">plant genes<\/a> to boost the amount of plant oil being produced. That\u2019s because inside the plant, a complex network of metabolic pathways turns sunlight, carbon dioxide (or atmospheric carbon), water and nutrients into vital compounds including oil, the foundational ingredient of biofuel.<\/p>\n<p>Genes give instructions to enzymes, and, in turn, those enzymes help control the plant\u2019s metabolic pathways. But we are only beginning to understand how modifying these genes to produce more oil affects the plant\u2019s other metabolic pathways, which are all interconnected.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Arabidopsis may seem like a simple plant, but at the University of Missouri, plant biochemist Jay Thelen is using it as a powerful model to explore ways to boost oil production\u2014an important step toward creating more sustainable, plant-based energy sources. To meet the increasing global demand for biofuels, scientists are already modifying plant genes to [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":732,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-217595","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-biotech-medical"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/217595","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/732"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=217595"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/217595\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=217595"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=217595"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=217595"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}