Now if you’re like me, you have been expressing some concern as to where we are going to get energy in the upcoming years. The increasing price of oil and the inefficiencies of solar power definitely cause some reason to worry. Lucky f0r us, a new development at the University of California, Davis, might just solve all of our problems.
Shota Atsumi and his team at UC Davis made ground breaking research in Cyanobacteria that could lead to a solution to our energy problems. This Blue-Green bacteria uses sunlight and carbon dioxide to create 2, 3 butanediol, which is a chemical that can be used to create paint, solvents, plastics and even fuel. The Scientists identified the enzymes that carried out the reactions that they wanted, and “introduced the DNA for these enzymes into the cells.” While the experiment was deemed unpredictable at first because they were unsure how enzymes would work in different organisms, the end result was that the Cyanobacteria yielded 2.4 grams of 2, 3 butanediol per liter of growth medium. This is a groundbreaking experiment because these scientists may have possibly taken the first steps to solving our energy crisis. Imagine, we may be able create fuel and other resources by simply using the power of the Sun!
What do you guys think about this? Comment below.
inewitt
Great article. There’s been a lot of research into using bacteria as a fuel source recently and with each revelations it seems more and more like that is going to be the way to go in the future. Here is an some research from MIT that gets fuel from bacteria, uses up CO2, and keeps the bacteria alive. http://www.livescience.com/22663-bioengineered-bacteria-fuel-cars.html
sciencegirl025
Great article! It seems like we will have a back up plan in case our primary energy sources are unavailable. You should check out this article about Audis literally ground breaking invention of running cars on Methane (CH4), which allows the byproduct of many companies to be put to good use. Plus it’s an extremely large step in becoming fuel efficient and recycling harmful wastes. So cool!
http://www.foxnews.com/leisure/2012/10/01/audi-developing-synthetic-fuel-for-automobiles/
dwil
The concern of our energy future is a very important and troubling one. The article and the post are both very interesting. If scientists and researchers were able to come up with a realistic way to harvest energy in this way, the entire way we see energy could change. We have been relying on oil way too much over the years. Maybe bacterial energy is out future. Here is another article.
http://news.sciencemag.org/sciencenow/2011/09/waste-water-bacteria-clean-energ.html