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DNA Helix

Sunlight to Oil via Designer Bacteria

February 5th, 2008 posted by Josh Hill

I was reading this article and I thought: what if bacteria could designed with every sunlight-capturing pigments —this rare form of chlorophyll, “green” chlorophyll, beta-carotene, etc.— to capture the widest possible light spectrum? It would be able to convert an absurd proportion of sunlight energy into chemical energy. If this was coupled with an up-regulation of the fatty acid synthesis pathway, then these bacteria would be used to directly convert light energy into oil at a very high efficiency.

Unlike existing plant alternatives, the raw bacteria oil would be a transportable, near-end product that would save us from having to invest in an extensive new refining and transportation infrastructure. Even better, the bacteria could be hypothetically grown anywhere: massive hydroponic plants in the desert, miniature hydroponic tiles on buildings, even on Antarctic ice or quarantined open ocean.

Certainly, this bacteria would be far more efficient than terribly energy-inefficient, agriculturally-exhaustive corn ethanol or dangerous, difficult-to-transport hydrogen.

Comments
Tags: bacteria, oil, photosynthesis

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    hi !!
    well, I think that bacteria couldn't live in the Earth ecosystem. supposing it was hiper-efficient in capturing solar energy, I bet the Earth has seen before such a kind of bacteria, as Evolution has created lots of specimens now disappeared, so my guess is that a bacteria (or organism) MUCH more efficient than its mates in environment, will populate massively thanks to its advantage, then kill its ecosystem, then disappear. My guess is: that has already happened at some point of evolution, but such an organism is not friendly with its ecosystem, because its much more efficient, populates much faster, etc, so it inevitably disappears after all. the point I'm trying to make is there can't be organisms that are much stronger/better/efficient than their ecosystem-mates, because they would overpopulate it. ecosystem is a delicate equilibrium !

    I suppose there are two kind of thinkings in front the fear of an engineered-organism delivered to the environment:

    -those who think that because it hasn developed with the ecosystem, it will be unable to survive in it, so there's no danger in engineered-organisms delivered to environment.

    -those who think that because it has been engineered, it can potentially have a huge advantage in procreating and thus kill its ecosystem.

    my guess is that the predating/being-predated or surviving/disappearing is like the function X^3: it has a small 'stable' region around 0 (coexistence), but towards +x it grows super-fast, and towards -x it decreases super-fast (being +y predates the medium, -y the mediu predates the organism. what would be the X ? maybe time ?

    this matematical example has just been made up in my head and I dont know if it explains what I mean, I'm trying to suggest that equilibrium seems very difficult, while overpopulating or disappearing sounds as absorving asymptotes.

    I'm spanish, pardon my english mistakes (and repeating concepts, I swear I dont repeat as much in spanish :P )

    best regards,

    Elias
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    Thanks for the comment. I'm glad some of these posts are spurring some thought provoking comments.

    In response to what you said, these organisms wouldn't be designed to survive on their own. Certainly an organism can dominate the ecosystem and cause a lot of problems; an example is when cyanobacteria evolved and made Earth's atmosphere poisonous with oxygen.

    I don't think that's a risk with this. First, most organisms channel all their energy into reproducing, generally at least. These custom oil producing bacteria or algae would put all their energy into making oil; this doesn't help them survive, but actually hurts it, so natural selection would not favor them. We could also make them deficient in some gene necessary for reproduction, or modify a promoter of a key gene in the cell cycle pathway, such as one of the cyclin dependent kinases, so that they will only divide when we expose them to a particular chemical. This would also prevent them from "getting out" into the wild.

    In essence, these man made organisms wouldn't be able to survive on their own, and if they could, they would die off pretty quickly because they couldn't compete with other more "fit" organisms. The idea is to simply use the cellular machinery and enzymes to catalyze the reaction for us.

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  1. Ecosystem Super-Saturation by Genetically Modified Organisms | Think Gene
    February 23, 2008 @ 7:55 pm

    [...] elias writes (in translated Spanish) regarding designer solar bacteria: well, I think that bacteria couldn’t live in the Earth ecosystem. supposing it was [...]

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