Hi there! My name is Celena Chen and I am a High School South senior who is currently doing a Research in the Sciences Independent Study this year on duckweed (aka Lemnaceae).
Everyone knows that environmental sustainability and renewable sources of energy are major concerns that face our current and future generations. We need new, reliable sources of fuel, fast, to power our cities, populations, world; but at the same time, it is imperative that we look to minimize our ecological footprints by looking to environmentally-friendly sources of fuel.
This is where duckweed come in. Duckweed have gained recent headway for their potential as viable biofuel sources. They have two remarkable characteristics that lend them well to being used as such: their rapid growth rate, and ability to accumulate high densities of starch (Xu, Zhao, Stomp, et. al., Biofuels Future Science Group Review, 2012) .What I am interested in is its latter quality. For my project, I am working with my mentor, AP Biology instructor Dr. Meenakshi Bhattacharya, who was also my Honors Bio teacher, in attempting to artificially select duckweed for higher starch content, as elevated D-glucose levels is a viable trait for large-scale production of ethanol. My hope is that the research I do this year at my high school will be relevant to the ongoing global hunt for better, smarter biofuels.
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