Department of Energy Funds SRI to Enhance Bioinformatics Tools for Renewable Energy Research

MENLO PARK, Calif., Jan. 26, 2011 /PRNewswire/ -- SRI International, an independent nonprofit research and development organization, announced today it has been awarded a grant by the Department of Energy (DOE) to expand its MetaCyc database and enhance its Pathway Tools software. This project will give SRI's bioinformatics tools even greater utility in the emerging area of bioenergy, or renewable energy derived from biological sources.  

SRI will expand its MetaCyc database to include energy-related metabolic pathways and enzymes associated with lignocellulosic biomass degradation, hydrogen production, and microalgae oil production. This expansion will allow the Pathway Tools software to recognize bioenergy-related pathways in sequenced microbes, resulting in more accurate metabolic pathway reconstructions, and enabling scientists to develop new ways to produce fuel and other valuable products from biomass and microorganisms.

"Expanding our use of renewable energy resources, such as biomass, is currently a major challenge facing society," said Peter Karp, Ph.D., director, Bioinformatics Research Group in the Artificial Intelligence Center at SRI. "Designing optimal new pathways for desired chemical products, such as biofuels, is a challenging problem for metabolic engineers because of the huge space of potential pathways that must be explored. This area is ripe for improved computational approaches."

Pathway Tools software will draw on data in SRI's databases to generate alternative pathways to create a target compound from specified feedstocks. SRI's software will also evaluate each pathway's utility to produce the specified target compounds, thereby allowing researchers to quickly identify and evaluate multiple pathways, design effective research protocols, and shorten development timeframes.

More than 2,000 researchers in government, academia, and industry already use SRI's bioinformatics databases and software tools to accelerate research leading to advances in biotechnology, including the development of new drugs and new routes to important chemicals.  

About MetaCyc, BioCyc, and Pathway Tools

MetaCyc, a database in SRI's BioCyc database collection, is the largest database of experimentally determined and literature-curated metabolic pathways available. Pathway Tools is a collection of software tools that predicts the metabolic pathways of organisms from their sequenced genomes and generates organism-specific pathway databases by comparing the genome annotation of each organism to the pathways within the MetaCyc database. The software also helps researchers query, visualize, analyze, and curate pathway databases. BioCyc is a collection of such pathway databases.

BioCyc databases are freely available to all researchers. Pathway Tools software is freely available to academics for research purposes.

For more information about SRI's work in bioinformatics, visit: http://bioinformatics.ai.sri.com/

About SRI International

Silicon Valley-based SRI International, a nonprofit research and development organization, performs sponsored R&D for governments, businesses, and foundations. SRI brings its innovations to the marketplace through technology licensing, new products, and spin-off ventures. Commemorating its 65th anniversary in 2011, SRI is known for world-changing innovations in computing, health and pharmaceuticals, chemistry and materials, sensing, energy, education, national defense, and more.

Acknowledgment: This effort is supported by the Department of Energy's Office of Science under Award Number DE-SC0004878.

Disclaimer: This effort is sponsored by an agency of the United States Government. Neither the United States Government nor any agency thereof, nor any of their employees, makes any warranty, express or implied, or assumes any legal liability or responsibility for the accuracy, completeness, or usefulness of any information, apparatus, product, or process disclosed, or represents that its use would not infringe privately owned rights. Reference herein to any specific commercial product, process, or service by trade name, trademark, manufacturer, or otherwise does not necessarily constitute or imply its endorsement, recommendation, or favoring by the United States Government or any agency thereof. The views and opinions of authors expressed herein do not necessarily state or reflect those of the United States Government or any agency thereof.

SOURCE SRI International