Revealed: Bacteria That Turns Sunlight Into Fuel

[DMac]

Revealed: Bacteria That Turns Sunlight Into Fuel (http://www.fastcompany.com/1688921/joule-biotechnologies-patents-fuel-generating-bacteria)
BY Ariel SchwartzTue Sep 14, 2010

snip

Just under a year ago, startup Joule Biotechnologies announced it had engineered microbes that require only sunlight and CO2 to squirt out ethanol, diesel, or other hydrocarbons. On Tuesday, Joule revealed the details of that secretive microbe in the first patent for an organism that generates hydrocarbon fuel directly from sunlight.

According to the patent, Joule's secret sauce is an engineered cyanobacteria (or blue-green algae) containing "a recombinant acyl ACP reductase (AAR) enzyme and a recombinant alkanal decarboxylative monooxygenase (ADM) enzyme." That witches' brew of cyanobacteria and enzymes allows for hydrocarbon production in a single step. The organisms just capture sunlight to produce "Joule liquid energy", a biofuel-like substance. Joule liquid energy can be an ethanol or diesel fuel replacement.

[Half Sense]

Yep, I bought a few shares of a company called OriginOil [OOIL], who grows biofuel (algae, basically) in certain areas of the lower Mississippi River and Gulf. The fuel can only be grown in low-oxygen waters, so the only time of year it works is when the runoff of fertilizer from Midwestern farms kills large areas of the Delta.

Now thanks to the well disaster, an big section of the Gulf is oxygen-depleted, perhaps permanently. Hmmm....anyway, that's why I bought the OOIL.

[ShortJohnSilver]

If it truly works well, it will never see the light of day ...