Echeria Coli Co-Opted To Make Gasoline

Flask_Man writes "Technology Review has an article about a small biotech company in the Silicon Valley that has successfully produced renewable gasoline from genetically modified bacteria, including the nefarious E.Coli bacteria. A pilot plant is slated to be constructed in California in 2008, and it is claimed that hundreds of different hydrocarbon molecules are capable of being produced. The modified bacteria make and excrete hydrocarbon molecules that are the length and molecular structure the company desires. From the article: 'To do this, the company is employing tools from the field of synthetic biology to modify the genetic pathways that bacteria, plants, and animals use to make fatty acids, one of the main ways that organisms store energy. Fatty acids are chains of carbon and hydrogen atoms strung together in a particular arrangement, with a carboxylic acid group made of carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen attached at one end. Take away the acid, and you're left with a hydrocarbon that can be made into fuel.'" We discussed something similar to this earlier this year.

Comments

Easy, by not making gasoline...

[nietsch]

If you had even read the summary, you would have known that they are taking the fatty acids route. Bacteria store those (or more likely tri-glycerides) in their bodies as a reserve. At the end of the line the bacteria are harvested and their fatty contents separated. That produces some kind of oil, but is still too viscous to be used as diesel fuel. Some simple methylation steps separate the glycerydes from the fatty acids and attach a methyl (or ethyl) group instead. This is basic chemistry and any Waste Vegetable Oil converting freeloader (usually the WVO is free if you collect it yourself) can do it.
It is rather shocking how unknowledgable /. has become lately. Is the US school system so bad or have you all dropped out of it?