Fresh Science

But researchers have to teach yeast to make it Thursday 5 June 2014 Queensland researchers are persuading baker’s yeast to produce orange-flavoured renewable jet fuel from sugar. Mr Timothy Brennan and his colleagues at the University of Queensland’s Australian Institute for Bioengineering and Nanotechnology have helped genetically-engineered yeast to evolve to make an oil called…

A native species of fast-growing and non-invasive microscopic algae could produce an alternative fuel up to 10 times more productive than existing biofuels, say scientists from The University of Queensland. Dr Evan Stephens and his research team have identified a number of algae strains that could be farmed to produce a renewable fuel that would…

Queensland astronomers have used the entire universe to weigh the smallest building blocks of nature. Dr Signe Riemer-Sorensen and a research team at The University of Queensland used a three-dimensional map of 250,000 galaxies to measure neutrinos, helping us to better understand galaxy formations, supernova explosions and the processes fuelling our sun and stars. “Neutrinos…

A newly discovered gene is set to save your lager by reducing the fungicides that control a disease in barley crops, researchers say. Dr Lee Hickey, of The University of Queensland, led a research project that identified a gene responsible for barley plant resistant to rust, a blight estimated to cause $21 million worth of…