This week I shall blog about a number of papers that have appeared discussing various areas of Industrial Biotechnology, a chief driver of which is the recognition that in the very-foreseeable future fossil-derived sources of organic chemical feedstocks (petrochemicals) will have run out, and that they will need to be replaced by carbohydrates derived from recent photosynthesis. Some chemical intermediates to be produced in biorefineries are of especial interest. First up is an interesting survey of the use of l(a)evulinic acid as a sugar-derived feedstock for industrial biotechnology, also discussing two others that explore the use of chemicals derived from valero-lactone. It is probable (and there are modern examples such as Botryococcus braunii) that the alkanes and alkenes found in natural oil deposits were formed biosynthetically (as opposed to via the abiotic effects of physico-chemical forces on other kinds of biomass, to form coal), and an alternative approach seeks the reactions of alkane/alkene biosynthesis themselves, an approach discussed and realized by a group from the LS9 company. One of the most important platform technologies is the use of genome-scale metabolic network reconstructions, something on which I am personally very keen (especially when they are encoded in a semantically accurate manner). A recent review highlights their utility in improving the productivity of biotechnological processes.

Last week I dwelt a fair bit on data, and mentioned one site to which users can upload their data and seek explanatory rules for them. The system can in fact be downloaded. Another interesting site allows one to visualize one’s uploaded data in any number of ways.

Data are an important part of what is coming to be called e-infrastructure, and RCUK has just released the review (“Delivering the UK’s e-Infrastructure for research and innovation”) from a Panel charged with looking at this and making appropriate recommendations, which will be followed up. A chief one among them is the need for improved coordination.

It is often the case that one seeks information on a new field, and this is nowadays done digitally. Wikipedia is often a useful starting point, but its pages are necessarily short and rather high level, and certainly not like a proper or formal course of instruction. For those seeking such, MIT’s OpenCourseWare may be a good place to look. Innovation is of course something that everyone would like to formalize but none (or none publicly) has so far succeeded. A nice little book I have just read rehearses some of the reasons, and recognizes that the skills and environment needed for helping creativity differ from those necessary for the reduction of great ideas to practice. As Steve Jobs allegedly said, “Real artists ship”.

I am just starting a couple of books on data visualization, one of which has alerts for some great links to online resources, such as one for making wordles. Another link allows one to see the frequency of given names and how that has changed over time: Douglas peaked strongly in the 1950s, David did so in the 50s and 60, while Seren* came from nowhere in the 90s and is still rising, and Loren changed from being mainly a boy’s to a girl’s name. One can imagine similar databases and visualizations of scientific words, papers, citations and so on, to help make sense of the tsunami of scientific literature.

Finally, I am just (belatedly) reading Peter Gregory’s eponymous book on Plant Roots – an excellent summary of knowledge to that time – and have edited the proofs of an upcoming review in Arch Toxicol.

 

Related posts (based on tags and chronology):