GE Microbes Make Ersatz Crude Oil From Many Sources

polymath69 writes "According to The Times Online, genetically modified microbes have been developed capable of turning surplus material such as wood chips, sugarcane, or others, not into ethanol, but into a substance which could substitute directly for crude oil. They claim it could be sold for about $50/bbl, and the production process would be carbon negative."

Comments

Re:Why talk

[afidel]

Uh, the GE stands for Genetically Engineered, not General Electric....

You will only shit pure gold ...

[DrYak]

E.Coli, usually harmless etc, commonly found in the gut and able to survive brief periods outside it's normal (animal intestine) environment. So if this escaped into the wild, and you accidentally consumed a small amount {...} {...} you will suddenly find OPEC representative knocking at your door, ready to pay you $WADS_OF_CASH for the privilege of processing your toilet's waste !

{...} each time you go to the "throne", you will be literally sitting on a gold mine !

{...} some /.ers tend to pulling numbers out of your ass, you will be pulling millions out of yours !

{...} you will be the living final proof that a turd, given enough polishing, could indeed be a golden turd !

{...} some people pee on their car to unfreeze the keylock on cold morning, you would do it to fill the tank !

etc, ad nauseam.

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Ok. Scatological jokes aside : as E. Coli is a comensal bacteria, our body have evolved and got used to have it inside. We naturally have lots of means to control the important and diverse population of bacteria living in our guts - including having an immune system that keeps the bacteria on the "outside" side of the gut and not entering inside the body itself and including already having an amazing amount of bacteria already living there and leaving less free place for new comers.

The only exception if one of the newcomer specie that comes into the gut is producing some toxin (food poisoning is actually due to the toxin, not the bacteria themselves. Often the bacteria don't survive digestion or are already dead to begin with - that's why charcoal and yeast are more efficient than antibiotics to handle them).
This GE bacteria is simply fermenting garbage into something that looks like oil. You may develop a mild diarrhoea, but there aren't horrible self-digesting-into-a-small-pile-of-gunk short-term risks of having oil in your guts, and the usual defences will take care that it all stays in the gut.