Hydrogen-Emitting Microbe Examined

Concerned Onlooker wrote to mention an article at Science Daily discussing a microbe that lives in volcanic environments, which emits Hydrogen gas as a waste product. "As the world increasingly considers hydrogen as a potential biofuel, technology could benefit from having the genomes of such microbes. 'C. hydrogenoformans is one of the fastest-growing microbes that can convert water and carbon monoxide to hydrogen," remarks TIGR evolutionary biologist Jonathan Eisen, senior author of the PLoS Genetics study. "So if you're interested in making clean fuels, this microbe makes an excellent starting point.'"

Comments

Excellent!

[commodoresloat]

Now we can invent cars that run purely on the farts of microbes.

Eh?

[LiquidCoooled]

From the opening of the article:

Take a pot of scalding water, remove all the oxygen, mix in a bit of poisonous carbon monoxide, and add a pinch of hydrogen gas. It sounds like a recipe for a witch's brew. It may be, but it is also the preferred environment for a microbe known as Carboxydothermus hydrogenoformans.

If you remove the oxygen, won't you be left with Hydrogen anyway?

Re:So it "converts" ...

[Anonymous Coward]

I bet half it's energy is wasted multiplying.

I have the same problem...

Prior art

[Anne Thwacks]

Unfortuately, when this gets in to the wild, it mutates into a microbe that eats plastic, and aeoroplanes drop from the sky like stones.

As described in a 1950's science fiction story.