Roots & Shoots Blog

Fueling Innovation Through Collaboration

An Excerpt from Enterprise’s Driving Futures blog
By Claire Carstensen

As millions of Americans hit the road this summer, they are paying the most expensive gas prices in six years. This gasoline sticker shock was one more reminder of the need to develop an abundant and sustainable supply of alternative fuels.

That’s an issue that Enterprise has championed for nearly a decade. Since 2006, our owners, the Taylor family, and the Enterprise Holdings Foundation have given more than $35 million to the Donald Danforth Plant Science Center and its Enterprise Rent-A-Car Institute for Renewable Fuels to help fund development of the next generation of alternative fuels. More recently, Enterprise established an endowment for sustainable energy research at the University of Missouri, where researchers also are achieving promising results in the field of biofuels.

Click here to read the full article.

Enterprise Rent-A-Car Institute for Renewable Fuels at the Danforth Center

The mission of the Enterprise Institute is to develop and apply technologies to enhance the potential of oilseed crops, algae and bioenergy grasses as sources of sustainable bioenergy.

The Institute does high-risk research with the potential to alter current paradigms for bioenergy crops. Technologies are developed to improve bioenergy grasses and the production of plant and algal-based oils with the ultimate goal of production at commercial scale.

NEXT GENERATION SCIENTISTS - the Enterprise Institute is committed to training collaborative disciplinary teams focused on bioenergy research.

• Twenty-three postdoctoral trainees and 19 graduate students are an integral part of the Institute’s research team.

• Five prestigious fellowships were awarded to postdoctoral trainees working in the Enterprise Institute:

• USDA National Institute for Food and Agriculture Fellowship to identify factors that regulate gene expression in Camelina sativa.
• Japan Society for the Promotion of Science to investigate the evolution of reproductive cycles in green algae.
• Life Science Research Fund Fellowship to examine C4 photosynthesis using Setaria, corn and rice.
• National Science Foundation (NSF) to study parallel evolution and gene regulatory changes between C3 and C4 grass species.
• NSF Fellowship to study cold, heat and drought stress tolerance of Brachypodium distachyon, a model plant for bioenergy grasses.

• Nine undergraduate students were trained in Enterprise Institute labs as part of the Center’s NSF funded Research Experiences for Undergraduates summer internship program.

• More than 400 students from area high schools participated in the Mutant Millets program, a partnership between students, teachers and plant scientists to discover new plant traits.

For more information on the Enterprise Institute at the Danforth Center, click here.