Gasoline.
Diesel.
Jet Fuel.
All three of these transportation fuels have now been created by engineered E. coli bacteria that feed on switchgrass, a renewable source of biomass. By inserting genes into the bacteria that can digest the cellulose in the plant matter, and through even more metabolic engineering, shift that carbon into high-energy fuel hydrocarbons. Read the open-access research article here at PNAS.
Our biofuels can’t compete with our food sources (looking at you, corn ethanol), and these advanced methods are the next generation sources we’ve been looking for. There’s a few catches in this study, like whether the pre-treatment methods and all that are scalable, but YAY BIOFUELS!
(via Berkeley Lab News Center, image of E. coli via Wikimedia)
