Biofuel from Bacteria

Feature

Written by Sabrina Deparine

Wednesday, 03 February 2010 12:13

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Researchers at the Joint BioEnergy Institute, a subsidiary of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, have developed a technique that can convert a familiar bacterium to biofuel.

Researchers have finally found a good use for E.coli, a bacterium specie commonly associated with expired meat products that can cause life-threatening diseases. The said bacteria are genetically-modified to produce fatty acids from plant sugar. These fatty acids are then converted to biodiesel. Eric Steen, who authored the study, says that E.coli is highly-suitable for biofuel production because it is “exceptionally amenable to genetic manipulation”. However, current methodology requires combining E.coli with plant sugar, one form of biomass. To sum up the entire process, the E.coli feed on the biomass (plant sugar) to produce fatty acids.

Image Source:http://jakst.files.wordpress.com/2009/06/e-coli1.jpg

Image Source:http://jakst.files.wordpress.com/2009/06/e-coli1.jpg

At the moment, the researchers are not sure if the oil or fatty acids can be derived using other plant or biomass materials. It will be quite difficult and tedious to conduct experiments on other plant materials because these have to be broken down to determine if they have similar components as plant sugar.

LS9, a South San Francisco-based company that also participated in the study, is continuing the research on how to cultivate the bacteria for commercial-level production of biofuel. According to Steen, the researchers are keen on developing better techniques to engineer E.coli for this specific purpose. E.coli does not normally take in sugar and convert it to biofuel. What these bacteria do is propagate and continuously find food sources.

The resulting biofuel from this study consists of energy-dense molecules. This means better mileage. For instance, if a gallon of traditional ethanol fuel allows you to drive one mile, a gallon of E.coli biofuel will allow you to drive two miles. Steen also said that E.coli biofuel has more improved properties than the biofuel that we have now.

Biofuel production with E.coli may also be more efficient than producing biofuel from algae because algae cultivation is more difficult and expensive. The chemical process that converts algae to biofuel is also more complex than the one they used for converting E.coli.

This study is published in the January 28, 2010 issue of Nature, a science journal on renewable sources and other environment-friendly topics.