Genomic technologies applied to biofuel production

The bioconversion of lignocellulosic biomass into monomeric sugars through the action of cellulase enzymes is the slowest and most costly stage in the process of obtaining 2nd generation biofuels, and becomes the main economic difficulty that hinders the profitable use of this abundant energy source. A possible way to optimize the saccharification stage for bioethanol production is to deepen the knowledge of the molecular characteristics of the enzymatic systems that secrete fungal cellulases, through the use of different biotechnological strategies such as gene overexpression, cloning, transformation, among others. These parameters must be analyzed from the genomic and proteomic point of view, in order to provide key information for the improvement of biotechnological processes. In recent years, due to the great progress of molecular techniques, rapid, accurate, objective and applicable to a large number of samples methodologies have been developed for the detection and characterization of various fungal genes, based on DNA analysis by polymerase chain reaction (PCR).