The good news: In the near-future, genetically modified bacteria will turn corn, wheat, and other crops into petroleum fuel for our cars. This insures a brighter future for regular cars and hybrids. We will never run out of gas or similar fuel since we will then have a sustainable source. And we would become independent of the Oil-Baron nations.
I hope you don’t mind starving then. Farmers make more money selling their crops for fuel than for food. So when all our food crops are turned to ethanol, what do you plan on eating? Ask the Mexicans what ethanol production has done to their corn prices. Brazil is now making sugarcane into ethanol; hope you don’t like anything that uses sugar. Nothing is a panacea and turning food staples into fuel is just a bad idea. Why doesn’t someone come up with a way to turn something we don’t eat into fuel? Why is it always a food source? The article mentions that the modified bacteria can convert nonfood matter into hydrocarbons; this is a big step forward; but why E. Coli bacteria? Can they promise that these modified bacteria are not a threat to humans like their non-modified counterparts? I’m not trying to rain on anyone’s parade, but I have questions.
E. coli are easy to grow and work with in terms of genetic work. The second question depends on what the changes are. Can the bug survive in the human gut now and still produce the hydrocarbons? Will that make a person sick? Maybe. Does that make it a threat to humans? No. E.coli pathogens are food born. So you'll have to eat it. Then the nature of their work doesn't require strains that are multiple antibiotic resistant. There is a slight chance it could get out of the factory and into the water supply. But that chance exists for the E. coli O157:H7 spread around the fields of the local farm to do the same.
I doubt that, but it would be great if we could turn our food, sewage, and agricultural waste into fuel. Methane and methanol seem the easiest, then you can use MTG (methane to gas) to produce gasoline. If these new genetically modified e-coli can do better than FT then all the better, but we already have some that can do the methanol or methane first steps. For yields of biomass/coal to gasoline and some of the process. Ignore the coal part. If the bacteria can convert to methanol or methane then you can jump there. http://www.exxonmobil.com/apps/refiningtechnologies/files/conference_2011.1204.MTG_World_CTL.pdf
I realize we have a good genetic understanding of E. coli and that they are easy to grow; but E. coli infections can and do kill humans. A friend I know wound up with an infection from this bug and while it didn’t kill him, it came awful close. Look, I’m actually a proponent of genetic engineering, but we need to be careful. Bugs can get out of any system and we need to be sure that if they do, they won’t harm humans or animals. We have already had several outbreaks of E. coli in the last couple of years and several people have died. Let’s just be sure these modified bugs are safe, that’s all I’m saying.
Why does everyone always want to turn our food into fuel? The waste makes sense, now you’re making fuel from what we throw away. Turning our food into fuel only raises the prices everyone has to pay to eat. Why ignore the coal? If we can trap the CO2 and filter the particulates it makes a great fuel source and America is sitting on a mountain of it. Now we are talking jobs and energy. Turn it into gas or liquid fuel and you have a winner.
If you read my full statement it was food waste, not the food. Because this was a biomass thread, not a CTL thread, but the slides I dropped have pathways from methanol, biomass, and coal. I didn't want to swap it into a coal versus biomass discussion, and get all of the emotional arguments. GTL (natural gas to liquids) makes a lot more sense at today's fuel prices since natural gas is the cheapest way to make methanol, and methane or methanol can be transported fairly easily. That's the number one reason not coal to liquids, despite lots of government support starting with carter in the dark ages. Companies are building GTL not CTL, because even with subsidies CTL doesn't make much sense right now. From the slides you can see MTL can be built in about a $4B plant, that is about 50% efficient at converting methanol to premium gasoline. This is cost effective with today's methanol and oil prices. It simply makes sense that we pay a little more and transform our food and agricultural waste into fuel, instead of the way we treat it now, and organisms may allow us to do this more efficiently. Sewage can also be converted. Future crops may supplement methanol or ethanol production much better than corn and cane. It would even be better if some organisms like gmo e-coli could convert the waste to fuel without the $4B investment.
There are a few nasty E. coli strains out there, and then there are multiple more harmless strains living in your gut right now. Research like this starts with the harmless strains. The only way they are going to become harmful do to the project is if the genes spliced in include a mechanism to allow the E. coli to cross into the bloodstream, or make it produce a toxin. The first will only happen if a gene donor has the ability. For that reason, the researchers would have tried to keep to non-pathogenic donors. This lab likely doesn't even have pathogens in it do to regulation reasons. If, and this is a big if, they had to use a pathogenic donor in the event it was the only source for a gene, then they would have to take steps to not transfer the bad genes. Which can be really easy if the target gene is no where near the bad one, or they have a lot of screening work ahead of them. To avoid head aches, the odds are they only used harmless bugs for this work. The hydro carbon produced might act like a toxin in the digestive tract. It could be as distressing as taking mineral oil to nearly as bad as drinking crude. I don't know, but I lean more towards the mineral oil outcome. Of course, this all depends on whether these bugs can survive still in the gut, and if they would still produce the hydrocarbon there. Making this stuff takes energy, and doesn't confer any obvious advantage to the E. coli. So those that get out would likely die out or turn those extra genes off. To avoid problems of potential human infection and food poisoning, the future factories using this bug to make hydrocarbons shouldn't also make ice cream.
In the case of gmo organsisms, when it comes to food, they are engineered to out-compete the artificial selected versions. That makes them a threat to get out in the wild. When it comes to e-coli or yeast, the researched items, you can pick strains that can not compete. You can even put genes into these organisms to make them die young. Organisms use enzymes to do the chemical conversions, which are nice because they work without high temperatures. If we can isolate the process, then we can grow just the enzymes and use those in the process without the organisms. On the yeast end of things Mascoma Corporation - About Us
I do hope this works; being able to turn bio waste into fuel would be a big help in increasing the supply of energy.
