A biotech startup describes how it will coax petroleum-like fuels from engineered microbes within three to five years.
Creating Gas From Bacteria
The biofuel of the future could well be gasoline. That's the hope of one biotech startup that on Monday described for the first time how it is
coaxing bacteria into producing hydrocarbons that could be processed into fuels like those made from petroleum.
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.
I am not sure that this is an ideal scenario for the future, but given all of the doom and gloom over oil running our, i think that this poses some
interesting advances in the field of alternative fuel research. Not that this is alternative, but if scientists can create gas from bacteria, then
they should surely be able to engineer a cleaner more efficient gasoline, dont you think?
Regardless, I think that this is a relatively positive discovery, all things considered. Anyone care to comment?
