What if bacteria could make gasoline?
One of the problems with our dependence on petroleum is that it isn’t “renewable” (technically, it is … it just takes so long that it isn’t functionally), but what if we could “grow” gasoline? Looks like that might not be such a pipe dream after all:
LS9, a company based in San Carlos, CA, and founded by geneticist George Church, of Harvard Medical School, and plant biologist Chris Somerville, of Stanford University, had previously said that it was working on what it calls “renewable petroleum.” But at a Society for Industrial Microbiology conference on Monday, the company began speaking more openly about what it has accomplished: it has genetically engineered various bacteria, including E. coli, to custom-produce hydrocarbon chains.
To do this, the company is employing tools from the field of synthetic biology to modify the genetic pathways that bacteria, plants, and animals use to make fatty acids, one of the main ways that organisms store energy. Fatty acids are chains of carbon and hydrogen atoms strung together in a particular arrangement, with a carboxylic acid group made of carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen attached at one end. Take away the acid, and you’re left with a hydrocarbon that can be made into fuel. Source: Technology Review: Making Gasoline from Bacteria
Clearly this is in early stages of work, essentially proving that you can get something refinable out of these little buggers. One thing that I’d like to know is if these hydrocarbon chains are complex enough for all the other things we use petroleum for (plastics, pharmaceuticals, chemicals, etc). That is probably the Holy Grail of breaking our addiction to oil.
August 3rd, 2007 at 7:06 am
Everything old is new again:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C._acetobutylicum
Clostridium Acetobutylicum was used for producing synthetic hydrocarbons from starch starting in 1916 up until the 1940s, when cheap oil prices made the process unattractive.
Dave
August 3rd, 2007 at 7:34 am
Wow! I didn’t know that. Of course that is so true of science isn’t it? Discoveries made and “forgotten” and “found” again.
Dave … you’re always an awesome resource!
August 3rd, 2007 at 9:31 am
Aww, gee, thanks.
To really make things interesting and coupled, note that the person who discovered this bacteria was Chaim Weizmann:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chaim_Weizmann
who went on to become the first president of Israel.
One wonders how the world would be different if this one discovery hadn’t been made (or, made by someone else).
Dave
August 3rd, 2007 at 9:52 am
Dave true about the who making the difference. What if Gandhi had been a physicist and discovered E=mc^2?
I’m reading a fascinating book about electrons and electricity. Discoveries that were dismissed just because of who did the discovering.
August 3rd, 2007 at 10:35 am
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