Novel Technology to Produce Gasoline by a Metabolically-Engineered Microorganism - Polidicks

[url]http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/09/130929142737.htm[/url] [QUOTE][B]Scientists succeeded in producing 580 mg of gasoline per litre of cultured broth by converting in vivo generated fatty acid. [/B] In the paper (entitled "Microbial Production of Short-chain Alkanes") published online in Nature on September 29, a Korean research team led by Distinguished Professor Sang Yup Lee of the Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering at the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST) reported, for the first time, the development of a novel strategy for microbial gasoline production through metabolic engineering of E. coli. The research team engineered the fatty acid metabolism to provide the fatty acid derivatives that are shorter than normal intracellular fatty acid metabolites, and introduced a novel synthetic pathway for the biosynthesis of short-chain alkanes. This allowed the development of platform E. coli strain capable of producing gasoline for the first time. Furthermore, this platform strain, if desired, can be modified to produce other products such as short-chain fatty esters and short-chain fatty alcohols. In this paper, the Korean researchers described detailed strategies for 1) screening of enzymes associated with the production of fatty acids, 2) engineering of enzymes and fatty acid biosynthetic pathways to concentrate carbon flux towards the short-chain fatty acid production, and 3) converting short-chain fatty acids to their corresponding alkanes (gasoline) by introducing a novel synthetic pathway and optimization of culture conditions. Furthermore, the research team showed the possibility of producing fatty esters and alcohols by introducing responsible enzymes into the same platform strain. Professor Sang Yup Lee said, "It is only the beginning of the work towards sustainable production of gasoline. The titre is rather low due to the low metabolic flux towards the formation of short-chain fatty acids and their derivatives. We are currently working on increasing the titre, yield and productivity of bio-gasoline. Nonetheless, we are pleased to report, for the first time, the production of gasoline through the metabolic engineering of E. coli, which we hope will serve as a basis for the metabolic engineering of microorganisms to produce fuels and chemicals from renewable resources."[/QUOTE] Well then, how about that?

58% efficiency!

I guess this makes gasoline a biofuel?

And then this method of making gasoline was never heard of again.

Time to invade Korea!

Oh man, wait for the environmentalists to come out in force trying to shut this down asap.

[QUOTE=Shreddinger;42360855]I guess this makes gasoline a biofuel?[/QUOTE] Sort of literally but not really technically. Unless I've switched around the cause meaning of "[B]bio[/B]fuel" What do these use or energy though? If they have to eat plant matter they're useless. There's no room for biofuel on a planet that has 8 billion people to feed, you can't eat oil (not directly anyways) so pumping it out of the ground will always make more sense than growing food to turn into fuel. Until there's a glucose or fat producing bacteria that photosynthesis it's energy without required farmland, all these smoke in mirror "bacteria produces fuel" solutions will be a big joke.

This technology is far too dangerous for the oil giants to let continue without being swept under the carpet and forgotten about.

[QUOTE=sgman91;42360917]Oh man, wait for the environmentalists to come out in force trying to shut this down asap.[/QUOTE] While this is good for resources, I think it is better to go towards clean sustainable energy rather than more oil. I doubt it this is clean. But it is useful and another source of energy is better than running out of enough reliable energy sources. I wouldn't shut it down, but I wouldn't begin to rely on it since it is, essentially, oil; right? I would say use this kindof stuff for petrochemicals, plastics, etc, and change stuff like electricity production to clean energy.

Call it OILIX

I said they would do this! all the people out there who I ever explained what bio-engineering would do, I used this as an example! Vindication!

I still like the navy's plan, hook a nuclear reactor to an electrolysis cell that's sucking in sea water and co2 and convert it to jetfuel

Well at least we'll be using up current carbon rather than adding new carbon at an unsustainable rate. But still, this is a good development, even if half a gram per litre of broth is really weak; hopefully they can up the effectiveness of the culture so it can produce a relatively sustainable supply.

Also for an example the conversion rate is lousy, Half a gram of gas from a litre of the stuff is amazing but inefficient it would take areana sized tanks to make a cars worth of gas at that rate [editline]30th September 2013[/editline] Damn ninjad

[QUOTE=sgman91;42360917]Oh man, wait for the environmentalists to come out in force trying to shut this down asap.[/QUOTE] Even though synthetic fuels like this would be part of the carbon cycle, rather than adding to it.

[QUOTE=DaCommie1;42360870]And then this method of making gasoline was never heard of again.[/QUOTE] [QUOTE=Roll_Program;42361133]This technology is far too dangerous for the oil giants to let continue without being swept under the carpet and forgotten about.[/QUOTE] Well, until a company realizes the money to be made off it. Remember, rich companies don't suppress inventions. They steal them and try to make money off them instead.

Whatever happened to that girl who did this with algae?

[QUOTE=Usernameztaken;42362286]Whatever happened to that girl who did this with algae?[/QUOTE] I don't think she worked with the same process and she didn't aim for gasoline.

[QUOTE=draugur;42360789]58% efficiency![/QUOTE] Um, no it says 580 MG per liter of broth. It would take 1224(based on .71kg/liter) liters of broth to produce 1 liter of gasoline, based on the wiki page for gasoline saying it has a density of .71-.77 KG per liter.

and in 1000 years when E.T. visit our world ... all they find are some bacterias eating everything including self and producing gasonline ... and quite some weird rusty structures ...

[QUOTE=Dwarden;42362383]and in 1000 years when E.T. visit our world ... all they find are some bacterias eating everything including self and producing gasonline ... and quite some weird rusty structures ...[/QUOTE] Would be quite poetic, our inability to see past an oil-fuel based economy is the death of us, just not in the way we anticipated. (I know the situation could never arise, but it still made me crack a smile at the thought)

E. C[I]oil[/I]-i [editline]30th September 2013[/editline] In any case, this technology has me [I]pumped[/I]

[QUOTE=BFG9000;42362779]E. C[I]oil[/I]-i [editline]30th September 2013[/editline] In any case, this technology has me [I]pumped[/I][/QUOTE] You're going to hell for those puns

[QUOTE=Craigewan;42362877]You're going to [del]hell[/del] well for those puns[/QUOTE] fix'd