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Researchers Find Wood-Digesting Enzyme In Bacteria
AffidavitDonda writes with news that University of Warwick and University of British Columbia researchers have "identified the gene for breaking down lignin in a soil-living bacterium called Rhodococcus jostii. Although such enzymes have been found before in fungi, this is the first time that they have been identified in bacteria. The bacterium's genome has already been sequenced which means that it could be modified more easily to produce large amounts of the required enzyme. In addition, bacteria are quick and easy to grow, so this research raises the prospect of producing enzymes which can break down lignin on an industrial scale. By making woody plants and the inedible by-products of crops economically viable the eventual hope is to be able to produce biofuels that don't compete with food production."
I should probably start buying up some forest just about now...
.: Max Romantschuk
Since dandelions grow everywhere, it would be nice if they figure out how to make biofuel out of dandelions (and other weeds).
I once had a signature.
... how much longer until I can get a biological upgrade and just digest wood?
Haven't termite gut bacteria been known to digest wood for years?
Er... what about natural flora of ruminant alimentary tract? They digest cellulose.
Upward mobility is a slippery slope - the higher you climb the more you show your ass.
What are the chances of this thing getting out and eating all our forests? A kind of brown, pulpy goo....
Nick
Cellulase has been identified for many years as an enzyme capable of breaking down Lignin into its comstituent parts (sugars etc). It has been difficult to extract in quantity, however. But it's been on the market for years, though extremely expensive. And was obtained from bacteria grown in large digester tanks similar to the way vitamin C is commercially made.
So what makes this really new?
We use petrochemicals to make fertiliser instead of running cars so we're going to turn wood into fuel for cars instead of making fertiliser! What the hell is wrong with these people!!!!
So what will be left from crop harvests to fold back into the soil and preserve some bare shred of soil fertility if we even harvest the "inedible by-products"? Why do people overlook soil in the lifecycle? Soil contains chemicals, which plants take up and use to construct themselves; if you remove the entire plant and don't fold something truly equivalent back into the soil, then over time the soil becomes depleted of chemicals needed to sustain the process.
This entire post is a logical paradox! Can we have cheap gasoline now and fire these people? They are clearly mad and technically wrong ... :0)
The purpose of existence is to make money.
How about cars that run on wood pellets? That would save the effort of converting wood to oil-based fuel.
Burning things is bad. No, seriously, we don't have engines that burn clean enough to not produce pollutants.
I'm aware that creating batteries also produces pollutants, but what about aluminum/ceramic super-capacitors? Reusable, Non toxic, recyclable, self preserving (I've trickled slowly increasing amounts of electricity into 25 year old aluminum/ceramic capacitor circuits to bring them back into operation -- the more you use them, the more stable they are). Surely producing and recycling aluminum capacitors has less of a carbon footprint than all engines burning things all over the world.
I'm aware that by manipulating electro magnetism, you can propel vehicles without producing exhaust pollution of any kind... Can we say that about burning fuels (besides expensive to create hydrogen / oxygen mixtures)?
Don't you think it would be better to have non polluting electric vehicles, so that we can "upgrade" the efficiency of energy production facilities and have all the vehicles take advantage of the improvements immediately (instead of having to replace every vehicle)?
Clearly there are viable alternatives to burning things, the search to find more things to burn is sort of ridiculous to me; It's like discovering the wheel, but not using them and instead just trying to breed a better cart dragger and more durable carts.
Don't get me wrong: I realize that any form of energy harvesting will impact the environment in some way, but surely their are better production means than burning things, especially when the burning is simply to heat water... It seems foolish to harvest the biological chemicals of the top-soils that we need for food production, even by burning the stalks instead of the fruits. I realize not everyone can switch to electron powered vehicles immediately, but to me it seems that this very "difficult to upgrade" problem is why we should be trying to get away from fuel burning engines...
Interesting where this bacterium was isolated from:
Rhodococcus jostii sp. nov., isolated from a medieval grave.
"The taxonomic position of a bacterial strain isolated from the femur of the remains of Jost Lucembursky, margrave in Moravia, Brno (Czech Republic), was investigated by phenotypic, chemotaxonomic and molecular taxonomic methods..."
This either has to be a troll or you're getting started kinda early on the tequila bottle.
It's hard to deforest an area by growing so many trees that you use up too much water.
Perfect way to grow more prairie. Just make all the prairie plants genetically resistant to herbicides.
Controlled conversion of biomass might be a better answer than letting some of the wildfires burn.
See the news from Arizona.
1955!
Did Doc Brown and Marty help?
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
...but what about aluminum/ceramic super-capacitors?
The fundamental nature of the problem can be understood if you go online and look up "horsepower to kilowatt". Then enter in an example of the HP rating of your favorite small car and see what number pops out.
From the kilowatts listed, you can decide your minimal accepted run time in kilowatt hours, convert that to joules, and find out how many 3000 farad ultracaps you might need. The answer is a gawdawful lot.
Problem is, chemical energy is very, very dense.
Worse, suppose we posit a magical supercap that can do all that. Where's all the charge go when your car crashes, would you say? That'll cause a bang....
C//
Because corn isn't food. Maybe hundreds of years ago when native americans were selectively breeding it. Even then, it was kinda crappy, and they had to supplement it carefully with other things or else they would suffer malnutrition. In the 20th century, we've genetically engineered all the nutrients out or corn, making it mostly a source of lousy sugar. Corn is more useful to make fuel and biodegradable plastic than it is as a food.
Yeah but you can't compare an ICE to an electric drive on a "KW in" basis. The ICE isn't as efficient as an electric drivetrain. Plus what's wrong with changing our lifestyle to suit a different energy source? I don't know, maybe make cities livable? Maybe not own 6 cars and drive 5 hours a day to work?
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=2230314&cid=36414652
Suppose somebody had a candida yeast infection. These mature yeast have a tough, woody outer shell, so I wonder if the bacteria could be modified to be safe for human consumption and be candida yeasts' worst enemy. Just food for thought.
"I'm aware that by manipulating electro magnetism, you can propel vehicles without producing exhaust pollution of any kind"
Well you had better hurry up and patent that shit because nobody else has been able to do it. Where do you think the electricity comes from that produces said magnetism?
Got Code?
Good point. Too many decades of propaganda and processed calories have blinded us to this fact.
A fool throws a stone into a well and a thousand sages can not remove it.
Burning things is bad. No, seriously, we don't have engines that burn clean enough to not produce pollutants.
Uhh, no. This is like saying "chemicals are bad" or "radiation is bad". You need to look at what you're burning. The great thing about bio-mass fuels is the concept of "carbon neutral" combustion. You grow a bunch of plants/trees which take carbon -out- of the atmosphere, turn those plants into fuel and a year or so later release the same amount of carbon back into the atmosphere when you burn the fuel. There is no net increase in CO2 levels which means there is no contribution to the greenhouse effect.
On a macro scale there is little to no pollution, even if there appears to be because "burning things is bad". This is exactly the kind of hippy bullshit that holds back the development truly green technologies
Plus what's wrong with changing our lifestyle to suit a different energy source?
Nothing, if you want to do it. Most of us don't want to do it. Go ahead and change your lifestyle and leave the rest of us alone.
Agreed on the approximate CO2 neutrality, which is good, but the particulates (PM2.5s) can be very bad. I'm strongly in favour of adding biomass as (for example) a demand-callable electricity-generation fuel, but we have to pay attention to the PMs which can be hundreds of times higher than natural gas per kWh.
Rgds
Damon
http://m.earth.org.uk/
They might actually use the gene to genetically modify aneoribic bacteria and produce biofuels out of rotting wood which will end up as CO2 in the atmosphere either ways!
fungus digests the wood as an energy source. Wood is made up of cellulose and lignin. Cellulose is a carbohydrate and is completely metabolized by the fungus and breaks down into the carbon dioxide and water. Cellulose ----> carbon dioxide + water
Because corn isn't food.
Tell that to all the people in the world to whom it is a staple. When prices go up, people suffer. Just because you don't think corn ethanol should complete with food production doesn't mean it doesn't compete, here in the real world.
"this research raises the prospect of producing enzymes which can break down lignin on an industrial scale" :
Great, now leak those genetically engineered bacteria into the wild and all our trees will crumble to dust.
Anyone seen 'The Road' lately?