Newly Created Microbe Produces Cellulose And Sugars For Biofuels
esearches at the University of Texas at Austin, have put sugar producing genes into blue-green algae. The result are microbes that can produce glucose and sucrose for use in ethanol and designer fuel production.The microbe’s don’t need agricultural land and can in fact be grown in salty wate unsuitable for human consumption or crops. They use sunlight as an energy source and don’t need petroleum-based fertilisers.
The area required to grow enough corn to produce all the the fuel needed for US transport ion is estimated at around 820,000 square miles; roughly the size of the US Midwest. The researchers at Austin estimate that the microbes would require an area half-that size, which is still pretty big. Researchers think that with more work they could increase the productivity of the microbes to bring the area required down to 3.5% of that for corn.
The current task facing the researchers is to scale up the process from a laboratory setting to production one.
