The beast in the picture sits in what’s commonly called your “lower intestinals.” And the butt-ugly critter may just be the answer to our energy problems. Bacteria that live in your digestive tracts, and that can give you the runs, can be genetically modified to eat plants and then shit out jet fuel, high grade gasoline and other petroleum products. According to a CBS report, this was proven by a team of UCLA researchers.
The oil we use so abundantly was made by bacteria also. Problem is, it took them millions of years. A few years ago, bacteria were trained to hurry up, munch plants and excrete the equivalent of low grade diesel. Nothing new to that: For centuries, bacteria were used the same way to make ethanol, hooch, or Taittinger champagne. But that’s all low-grade stuff with only two carbon atoms per molecule. The greater the number of carbon atoms, the greater the energy density of the fuel. The UCLA researchers already made their coli bugs excrete fuel with five carbon atoms per molecule. Alcohol molecules with eight carbon atoms may also be possible, they report in this month’s edition of the scientific journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. That, my friends, means bacteria that shit out straight gasoline.
“We wanted to create larger, longer-chain molecules because they contain more energy,” the team wrote in the science journal. “This is significant in the production of gasoline and even jet fuel.” The new E. Coli bugs would be unleashed on organic material. And if they succeed, they could give huge amounts of industries and boondoggle projects a big case of diarrhea. Will the internal combustion engine be saved by a bug that’s at home in our ass?
The beast in the picture sits in what’s commonly called your “lower intestinals.”a bug that’s at home in our ass?
So, that septic tank in my backyard is no longer a liability. Yay.
“Hooch”. And I thought I was the only one who still used that phrase.Love it.
Bring it on. That critter could become real pretty in the coming decades. At least it wouldn’t cause a food shortage.
Great stuff.
There are other technologies being worked on that are very promising too;
Biofuel made from power plant CO2
“At the heart of the technology is a plastic cylinder full of algae, which literally sucks the CO2 out of a power plant’s exhaust. The algae can in turn be converted into biofuel.”
On the Universität für Bodenkultur Wien
University of Natural Resources and Applied Life Sciences, Vienna studies are going on for years to get to a similar solution with specialized (gene-technically altered) fungi growing a bacteria that is eating cellulosis and emits petroleum similar products.
Works in minimum quantities if you throw a machine the rough size of Cuperino behind.
Nothing new.
Theoretically this very method (to copy in a laboratory how bacteria produced oil from rotten cellulosis aeons ago) method is known & proven since many, many years.
The problem that fuel cannot be produced that way in commercial feasible quantities and in reasonable time (if you dont have a few million years to wait for the product) lingers on.
Europeans will never use it. They will call it “genetically modified fuel” and refuse to allow it into the EU.
crackers :
December 21st, 2008 at 8:36 am
Sorry to say that this is not so.
Under heavy US and GAT pressure the EU had given in to allow most of the genetical altered food, additives and especially animal feed into the EU. Only a few countries hold that barrier – but as they are harassed by legal means, chances are that this tiny last clean bastions will be also broken soon. “McJunk everywhere”
If that is wise – we certainly find out.
The USA will not win a lot but Europe with, in some areas, a highly diverted, refined & specialized bio-environment may lose a lot.
It may not be wise for TTAC to start listing this type of “news”. These type of miracle cures to our oil problem are announced on a daily basis on the internet…
“This is significant in the production of gasoline and even jet fuel.”
Last I checked Jet Fuel was closer to Diesel than it is to gasoline, so making it from a “bio” source is relatively simple already.
–chuck
@mr. Frankfurter,
I believe that crackers was being facetious.
Personally, I can’t wait until they unionize.
Taco Bell equals Sunoco Super Premium!
“Supersize me” leaves its traces and scars on societies – no doubt
The bacteria inside the gut of termites are very good at making cellulosic methane, but it remains to be seen whether or not this can be commercially exploited. Also, a recently discovered fungus from Patagonia craps out stuff that’s been dubbed mycodiesel.
Homebrew?
Still interesting.
I think the odd science article is ok, as long as we don’t turn into Green Car Congress and worship every press release from R&D land.
What is the little guy’s “carbon footprint”?
For centuries, bacteria were used the same way to make ethanol, hooch, or Taittinger champagne.
Bzzzzz! Wrong Answer!
While some bacteria do in fact produce ethanol, whiskey and wine are made with yeast, not bacteria.
A group of researchers from the University of Montana State has discovered that a type of fungi, called Gliocadium roseum, that can make gaseus biodiesel from vegetal waste.
http://www.autobloggreen.com/2008/11/05/tree-fungus-makes-gaseous-biodiesel-to-kill-its-enemies/
Robert Frankfurter,
How do you feel about Norman Borlaug?
This was a fun read. I laughed so hard. Thank you. I like your writing style.
I can envision, in man’s efforts to find a quick fix to the world’s energy problems, engineering a bug that produces gasoline so efficiently that they consume all of the biomass on Earth. A world devoid of all complex life forms, with gasoline oceans!
Perhaps the Matrix IS real!?
telrbm1,
Typically that kind of dystopian horror story is prevented by engineering the microorganisms to need trace nutrients not widely found in nature. Simply put, they won’t be able to survive in the wild.
The obstacles to scaling up these processes are significant enough that worrying about superbacteria escaping into nature and causing global disaster is more science fiction than anything else.
Cute little fella isn’t he? I wish my cats pooped bio diesel for the CRD Liberty.
Quick! Get the anti-bacterials!
How will we have a future of neutered, gutless cars and trucks if this becomes a viable solution??!! Oh wait, we still have CAFE…..
Why bother with the eating plants part. Toilet directly into the gas tank. Stand overnight and presto – high test.
So if this bug gets out my septic tank will be full of gasoline?
crackers :
December 21st, 2008 at 8:36 am
Europeans will never use it. They will call it “genetically modified fuel” and refuse to allow it into the EU.
LOL!
Ronnie Schreiber Life has a way of getting past the obsticals we place in front of it. Bacteria have been evolving for billions of years before us and will continue to millenia after we are dust. They are easily the most resiliant adaptable organism on the planet(and probably in the universe) and the origin of all life on the planet. Opening pandoras box to get a quick fix of energy would by typical for the human ego, wouldn’t it suck if the planet went back to it’s original first life form because we thought we were so smart. telrbm1 may end up not being that off.
Maybe my crohns will be good for something after all since it kills those bacteria in my gut thinkiing they are hostile.