Man-Made Bacteria Produces a Fuel That’s Better Than Gas
Researchers reported Monday that they have re-engineered a common bacteria to produce complex and energy-dense alcohols similar to the hydrocarbon compounds found in fuels such as gasoline. This is the first time these types of alcohols have been synthesized by bacteria (man-made or otherwise) in the lab.
E. coli is normally found in the guts of most warm-blooded animals (yes, even yours) and if you’ve had an encounter with it that you remember, chances are you spent the weekend on the toilet wishing you were dead. Yet, while it’s true that some strains of e. coli can cause food poisoning in humans, most are actually quite harmless.
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Not only are most strains harmless, they’re turning out to be key for making the next generation of biofuels. Scientists have been studying and isolating strains of e. coli for years that can synthesize various types of biofuels from many different sources, such as plant material and garbage.
But until now, these e. coli strains could only synthesize simple alcohols like ethanol. While this is a good start, the energy density and stability of these types of alcohols is relatively low, which leads to lower fuel economy in your car and the need for special handling equipment when compared to regular old gasoline.
To get around this problem, a research team housed at the University of California Los Angeles and headed by James Liao, has harnessed e. coli’s particularly active enzymatic production system and inserted some chromosomes into the bacteria’s DNA to “trick” it into making longer and longer chains of alchols with its existing “plumbing.” The result is that the modified e. coli can now produce complex and energy dense alcohols of 8 carbons in length. Blah.
So what the hell does that actually mean?
Gasoline is a mixture of many types of complex substances called long chain hydrocarbons. In a typical gasoline mixture these hydrocarbon chains range in length from 5 to 12 carbon atoms, with an average of about 8. The length of these chains is the secret to gasoline’s high energy density compared to its volume as well as the reason why it’s a relatively stable liquid. In comparison, ethanol is made up of alchol chains 2 carbons in length.
That’s why the ability of this new man-made e. coli strain to synthesize long-chain alcohols in the lab is so groundbreaking. If we could use this engineered e. coli to make fuel that was nearly indistinguishable from gasoline, but do it out of non-food plant material and garbage, that would be a game-changer, no?
Granted, the fuel produced by these organisms isn’t actually better than gas when it comes to energy density or stability. But when looked at as a whole, the fact that it’s not being mined out of the ground from organisms that have been dead and buried for hundred of millions of years is what, in my mind, makes it better than gas.
James Liao’s team has been working on this method for quite some time, and reported back in January on some initial breakthroughs. They say there is still much work to be done before the organism can start producing commercial quantities of fuel. The next step will be to get the process to a point where a development lab can take over and start optimizing it for commercial scale.
If you are so inclined, and either want to pay for access or have access through a university library, the study can be found in the most recent issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences journal.
Update 12/10/2008: Minor changes were made to the post text to differentiate clearly between long chain alcohols and long chain hydrocarbons as per suggestions of the commenters.
Source: PhysOrg
Image Credit: Scanning electron micrograph image of e. coli bacteria is in the public domain and can be found on Wikimedia Commons.
Thanks for the article. There is a lot of really interesting work in this area. For instance, Sapphire Energy (http://www.sapphireenergy.com/) out of San Diego is working in making gasoline from algae and there is some interesting work being done using yeast to convert sugar to gasoline as well.
Sounds promising, but what are the chances that this super e-coli could get loose and cause an epidemic? Sorry couldn’t resist a chance for a post apocalyptic moment. Seriously though, is there a chance that this could cause a mutation to an already nasty bug.
Doug,
That’s always the worry in the back of my head too. I’m not sure if it’s really something to worry about though. Although, they are forcing a bacteria to do something it never achieved on it’s own through evolution. I just don’t know. Scary to think that we can make synthetic bacteria now though.
Doug n’ Nick, of course there’s always the risk of contamination, but the amount of effort and money invested in modifying this bacteria practically implies that there is an equal amount of effort made to keep this E. coli in a restricted (probably productive) environment.
For decades the scientists have been making recombinant strains of m.o., and to this day I don’t recall any single human large scale contamination from those.
What’s really much more dangerous than this is the large quantities of antibiotics the humans are releasing into the biosphere (by means of animal food/wastes), that can lead to an overall increase of natural antibiotic-resistant microbes…
Something that worries me, is those big containers that will hold E. Coli should we start using it. What will happen if it spills? Massive diarrhea explosions..
The chemistry in the post is wrong.
Natural gas, gasoline and diesel are all mixtures of alkanes.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alkane
Methanol, ethanol and butanol are all alcohols.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alcohol
Alcohols in this case can be thought of as partly oxidized (burned) alkanes. They will always deliver less energy and be more chemically reactive.
Most Biodiesels in this case can be thought of as an alkane stuck to a light alcohol. They are almost as energy dense as diesel but burn almost as clean as alcohols. They are also more chemically reactive than alkanes but less then alcohols.
The real problem with most of these engineered sources (pushed because they are patentable!) is that they must be fed sugar which means they depend on industrial agriculture. Algae on the other hand can and are already being grown on land that is not viable for human food and the left overs after the oil is extracted can be fed to animals and people without processing.
I can’t believe that you continue to carry forward the myth that oil is a “fossil” fuel.
Teaching the “Oil as a fossil fuel” theory is as misguided as teaching creationism.
Just how many dinosaurs do you think there were and how do you think they got to Saturn’s moon Titan to make all the oil that was found there?
“Massive diarrhea explosions…”
Ohhh, the humanity!
Not all E. Coli strains are pathogenic. This week in my Ap Bio class we are going to insert a plasmid into a strain of E. Coli and make it fluoresce under UV light. It’s pretty easy stuff to work with and not very dangerous at all.
The problems with E. Coli are similar to the problems with Yeast. At what concentration of alcohol do they die off? If the concentration is low then distillation is the most expensive part of the process. Also, E. Coli mutate are incredibly fast rates. Keeping a stable culture, especially when using an unsterilized food source, would be very difficult.
In short, probably any microbiologist could manufacture an E. Coli that will produce oil in lab conditions, but is it an effective method to scale up? Is it even possible with the current technologies?
Personally I don’t thing so.
-Kyle
First question, before worrying about epidemics, does this E. coli even have the potential to make humans or animals sick?
Second, if this process were successful, what kind of waste products result from burning this fuel?
Can we continue, in the medium-long term, to pollute the atmosphere with the byproducts of hydrocarbon combustion?
Fifty thousand cavemen could say “Fire good” - 6 billion cavemen with internal combustion engines means the culture of burning is out of control.