Self-Destructing Bacteria Create Better Biofuels

MikeChino writes "Researchers at Arizona State University have genetically engineered cyanobacteria to dissolve from the inside out, making it easy to access the high-energy fats and biofuel byproducts located within. To do this they combined the bacteria's genes with genes from the bacteriaphage — a so-called 'mortal enemy' of bacteria that cause it to explode. Cyanobacteria have a higher yield potential than most biofuels currently being used, and this new strain eliminates the need for costly and energy intensive processing steps."

Comments

Biofuels are the future.

[purpledinoz]

Plants are the most efficient at collecting solar energy. Plants are the most efficient at storing energy as some form of hydrocarbon. We already have a huge infrastructure to distribute hydrocarbons. It's such a perfect fit. This hydrogen nonsense was a huge waste of money, and should have been invested in biofuels.

Re:Biofuels are the future.

[jamesh]

You are comparing turning the suns energy into electricity to turning the suns energy into hydrocarbons and then turning that into electricity, and you are discounting the other uses for the hydrocarbons.

Taking carbon out of the air and cracking water into hydrogen and oxygen takes a whole lot of energy and the plants do it better than they can in the lab, when the only energy input is the sun.

Evolution, suckers....

[Niedi]

As soon as even one or two bacteria manage to throw the phage-genes out again or, even simpler, acquire a loss-of-function mutation they'll have a huge advantage over the self-destructing ones and might eventually eliminate them. The result would be quite nasty for those who run the harvesting plant...

I'd at least suggest seperated smaller tanks of bacteria that are isolated from one another so that the damage of such an event is kept at a minimum.