A Sorghum seed comprising in its genome at least one polynucleotide encoding a polypeptide having an alanine to tyrosine substitution at position 93 of the Sorghum AHAS protein large subunit. The plant has increased resistance to one or more herbicides, for example from the imidazolinone group, as compared to wild-type Sorghum plants. The Sorghum plant may comprise in its genome, one, two, three or more copies of a polynucleotide encoding a mutated large subunit of Sorghum AHAS or a Sorghum AHAS polypeptide of the invention. In this context, the Sorghum plant may be tolerant to any herbicide capable of inhibiting AHAS enzyme activity. For example, the Sorghum plant may be tolerant to herbicides of the imidazolinones type, such as imazethapyr, imazapir, and imazapic or to herbicides of the sulfonylurea group.

The present disclosure relates to a novel acetohydroxy acid synthase subunit (ilvN) variant, a polynucleotide encoding the variant of the present disclosure, an L-valine-producing microorganism comprising the acetohydroxy acid synthase subunit (ilvN) variant of the present disclosure, and a method for producing L-valine using the microorganism of the present disclosure.

The present disclosure provides a recombinant microorganism for producing PHBV, a method for preparing the same, and a method for producing PHBV using the microorganism. The present disclosure may provide a recombinant microorganism capable of producing PHBV, which is a biodegradable plastic material with superior physical properties, directly from an inexpensive single carbon source with high efficiency without supplementation of organic acid. The present disclosure can enhance the utilization of PHA, which is expensive and has limited physical properties, and can also provide a technology more effective for industrialization using an inexpensive single carbon source. The PHBV produced according to an exemplary embodiment of the present disclosure can be used not only for general-purpose inexpensive products such as ecofriendly packing materials but also as a high-value-added medical biopolymer.

Multi-carbon compounds such as ethanol, n-butanol, sec-butanol, isobutanol, tert-butanol, fatty (or aliphatic long chain) alcohols, fatty acid methyl esters, 2,3-butanediol and the like, are important industrial commodity chemicals with a variety of applications. The present invention provides metabolically engineered host microorganisms which metabolize methane (CH.sub.4) as their sole carbon source to produce multi-carbon compounds for use in fuels (e.g., bio-fuel, bio-diesel) and bio-based chemicals. Furthermore, use of the metabolically engineered host microorganisms of the invention (which utilize methane as the sole carbon source) mitigate current industry practices and methods of producing multi-carbon compounds from petroleum or petroleum-derived feedstocks, and ameliorate much of the ongoing depletion of arable food source farmland currently being diverted to grow bio-fuel feedstocks, and as such, improve the environmental footprint of future bio-fuel, bio-diesel and bio-based chemical compositions.

The present disclosure relates to genetically modified cells containing mitochondria that have been transformed with a polynucleotide encoding an herbicide-resistant enzyme, such that the cells can grow in the presence of an inhibitor of the enzyme.