Microbes Produce Precursor To Missile Propellent

Makarand writes "According to this article on ScienceDaily.com microbiologists at the Michigan State University have created strains of bacteria which can convert certain types of sugars into a non-natural synthetic material, called butanetriol, which is used to produce a missile propellant (butanetriol trinitrate). The DNA of bacteria like Escherichia coli and Pseudomonas fragi was altered so that these bacteria could act as minifactories producing butanetriol. Interestingly, butanetriol is a precursor to two cholesterol-lowering drugs making this process useful in both pharmaceutical and defense applications."

Comments

Two thoughts on this

[chia_monkey]

First thought...just how much of this propellant can be produced by these microbes? It really seems like you'd need quite a bit to launch a missle. Can this be done from the work of some microbes?

Second...people will complain about how money is being spent on military research, but let's look at the positive here. It's a precursor to lowering colesterol. Who knows when we'll be working on developing some sort of funky things to melt enemy tires or something and come up with a compound that kills only cancer cells and leaves all other cells unharmed. It's exciting in an odd sort of way.

Re:Two thoughts on this

[tigeba]

"First thought...just how much of this propellant can be produced by these microbes? It really seems like you'd need quite a bit to launch a missle. Can this be done from the work of some microbes?"

Replace "propellant" with "alcohol" and "launch a missle" with "supply the fans at an NFL game" and proceed to ponder your question.