Red Seaweed 'viable biofuel'

Biofuel testing has revealed that red seaweed could become a viable crop, following research by scientists at the University of Illinois.

Assistant professor of microbial genomics at the Institute for Genomic Biology Yong-Su Jin has developed a strain of yeast that makes "short work" of fermenting galactose.

He explained: "Making biofuels from red seaweed has been problematic because the process yields both glucose and galactose, and until now galactose fermentation has been very inefficient."

However, the metabolic engineer identified three genes in the microbe used to ferment the sugars in the biomass and found their overexpression increased galactose fermentation by 250 per cent.

Mr Jin went on to state that the discovery greatly improves the economic viability of marine biofuels.

He added that many Americans fail to think of sea-based options when considering biofuel crops.

Elsewhere, scientists recently suggested in the Journal PLoS ONE that a red seaweed based compound could be an effective treatment against the common cold.