Bacteria modification could turn carbon into biofuel for cars

Soon a genetically modified bacteria could be used to extract the excess carbon dioxide out of the air and it turn into clean biofuel for powering cars.

Biologists in the United States have used a simple bacteria found in soil to create biofuel, but the project could take several years before it is scaled up to a size which could work in industrial production.

The MIT project run at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology intends on making vehicle fuels which are ten time more efficient than existing biofuels.

Researchers at the institute recently found that by swapping out genes from the R. eutropha bacterium they can create isobutanol – a substance which is alcohol based and can used instead of petrol in cars.

"We've shown that, in continuous culture, we can get substantial amounts of isobutanol," said Christopher Brigham, a biologist at MIT.

Unlike many projects using microbes, this study did not involve the researchers having to first kill the microbes before being able to extract the fuel. Instead it involved the bacteria being forced to spit the fuel out in a surrounding substance.

In natural bacteria, carbon is usually stored by the creation of carbon polymers, but Mr Brigham and his colleagues managed to remove genes while adding in a gene from another organism. This process led to the bacteria producing isobutanol rather than carbon polymer.

They now hope that the genetically modified bacteria can eventually lead them to being able to turn carbon dioxide into a clean and usable fuel.

Mark Silby, an assistant professor of biology at the University of Massachusetts at Dartmouth, said, “This approach has several potential advantages over the production of ethanol from corn. Bacterial systems are scalable, in theory allowing production of large amounts of biofuel in a factory-like environment.”

“This system in particular has the potential to derive carbon from waste products or carbon dioxide, and thus is not competing with the food supply.”