'Computer-Hacked' Bacteria Make: Crude Oil!

[Einhander Sn0m4n]

Making Gasoline from Bacteria

A biotech startup describes how it will coax petroleum-like fuels from engineered microbes within three to five years.

The biofuel of the future could well be gasoline. That's the hope of one biotech startup that on Monday described for the first time how it is coaxing bacteria into producing hydrocarbons that could be processed into fuels like those made from petroleum.

LS9, a company based in San Carlos, CA, and founded by geneticist George Church, of Harvard Medical School, and plant biologist Chris Somerville, of Stanford University, had previously said that it was working on what it calls "renewable petroleum." But at a Society for Industrial Microbiology conference on Monday, the company began speaking more openly about what it has accomplished: it has genetically engineered various bacteria, including E. coli, to custom-produce hydrocarbon chains.

To do this, the company is employing tools from the field of synthetic biology to modify the genetic pathways that bacteria, plants, and animals use to make fatty acids, one of the main ways that organisms store energy. Fatty acids are chains of carbon and hydrogen atoms strung together in a particular arrangement, with a carboxylic acid group made of carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen attached at one end. Take away the acid, and you're left with a hydrocarbon that can be made into fuel.

"I am very impressed with what they're doing," says James Collins, codirector of the Center for Advanced Biotechnology at Boston University. He calls the company's use of synthetic biology and systems biology to engineer hydrocarbon-producing bacteria "cutting edge."

In some cases, LS9's researchers used standard recombinant DNA techniques to insert genes into the microbes. In other cases, they redesigned known genes with a computer and synthesized them. The resulting modified bacteria make and excrete hydrocarbon molecules that are the length and molecular structure the company desires.

Stephen del Cardayre, a biochemist and LS9's vice president for research and development, says the company can make hundreds of different hydrocarbon molecules. The process can yield crude oil without the contaminating sulfur that much petroleum out of the ground contains. The crude, in turn, would go to a standard refinery to be processed into automotive fuel, jet fuel, diesel fuel, or any other petroleum product that someone wanted to make.

Next year LS9 will build a pilot plant in California to test and perfect the process, and the company hopes to be selling improved biodiesel and providing synthetic biocrudes to refineries for further processing within three to five years. (See "Building Better Biofuels.")

But LS9 isn't the only company in this game. Amyris Biotechnologies, of Emeryville, CA, is also using genes from plants and animals to make microbes produce designer fuels. Neil Renninger, senior vice president of development and one of the company's cofounders, says that Amyris has also created bacteria capable of supplying renewable hydrocarbon-based fuels. The main difference between the companies, Renninger says, is that while LS9 is working on a biocrude that would be processed in a refinery, Amyris is working on directly producing fuels that would need little or no further processing.

Amyris is also working on a pilot production plant that it expects to complete by the end of next year, and it also hopes to have commercial products available within three or four years. (See "A Better Biofuel.") Both companies say they want to further engineer their bacteria to be more efficient, and they're working to optimize the overall production process. "The potential for biofuels is huge, and I think theirs [LS9's] is one possible solution," Renninger says.

Indeed, many technology approaches are needed, says Craig Venter, cofounder and CEO of Synthetic Genomics, of Rockland, MD, which is also applying biotechnology to fuel production. "We need a hundred, a thousand solutions, not just one," he says. "I know at least a dozen groups and labs trying to make biofuels from bacteria with sugar."

Venter's company is also working on engineering microbes to produce fuel. The company recently received a large investment from the oil giant BP to study the microbes that live on underground oil supplies; the idea is to see if the microbes can be engineered to provide cleaner fuel. Another project aims to tinker with the genome of palm trees--the most productive source of oil for biodiesel--to make them a less environmentally damaging crop.

LS9's current work uses sugar derived from corn kernels as the food source for the bacteria--the same source used by ethanol-producing yeast. To produce greater volumes of fuel, and to not have energy competing with food, both approaches will need to use cellulosic biomass, such as switchgrass, as the feedstock. Del Cardayre estimates that cellulosic biomass could produce about 2,000 gallons of renewable petroleum per acre.

Producing hydrocarbon fuels is more efficient than producing ethanol, del Cardayre adds, because the former packs about 30 percent more energy per gallon. And it takes less energy to produce, too. The ethanol produced by yeast needs to be distilled to remove the water, so ethanol production requires 65 percent more energy than hydrocarbon production does.

The U.S. Department of Energy has set a goal of replacing 30 percent of current petroleum use with fuels from renewable biological sources by 2030, and del Cardayre says he feels that's easily achievable.

I wonder what this will mean for this whole Peak Oil thing...

[CaptainChewbacca]

If it works out, its a double-edged sword. Oil supply becomes effectively unlimited, but at the same time there's no longer a push to develop alternatives, so the environment continues to go to pot.

[Chris OFarrell]

YEah even in the unlikely best case of unlimited oil, the problem is that you have the Carbon TWINS, irrecoverably linked at the hip. You might solve the peak oil crisis, but unlimited cheap hydrocarbons over the growth curve we have can only be catastrophic for the environment.

[Pelranius]

It seems that everything humans dream up to solve a problem either contribute to another problem or start a new one entirely.

[DrMckay]

If this actually works, we might tell the Middle East, esp. the Saudis, maybe the Israelis, to go screw themselves in short order. (ie: no more $ or military aid.) They just became powerless again...

unless large petrochem companies sit on it until they get a controlling interest in the company that produces it, like with the hybrid...

Which will probably happen.

I can see it now;

Petrochem-Sponsored Politician: Playing with God's intelligent design of bacterium is wrong until my buddies in Shell and Haliburton take over the company. then its's ok.

[Sriad]

If it works out, its a double-edged sword. Oil supply becomes effectively unlimited, but at the same time there's no longer a push to develop alternatives, so the environment continues to go to pot.

It wouldn't be as bad as conventional oil; the bacteria will be (I assume, not having their specific trade secrets) fed some kind of pulverized nutritive plant mush which took it's carbon from the atmosphere in the first place.

Ahah! Reading the article yields

"LS9's current work uses sugar derived from corn kernels as the food source for the bacteria--the same source used by ethanol-producing yeast. To produce greater volumes of fuel, and to not have energy competing with food, both approaches will need to use cellulosic biomass, such as switchgrass, as the feedstock. Del Cardayre estimates that cellulosic biomass could produce about 2,000 gallons of renewable petroleum per acre. "

But still, fusion and microwave power plants can't come too soon for my liking.

[Scottish Ninja]

If this actually works, we might tell the Middle East, esp. the Saudis, maybe the Israelis, to go screw themselves in short order. (ie: no more $ or military aid.) They just became powerless again...

That sounds like the fear expressed during the 70's oil embargo, where the Arabs were saying, "We can't press the Americans too hard, otherwise they'll go and invent something better than oil".

[Illuminatus Primus]

Got a citation for that ever being said? Or do urban legends qualify as evidence?

[J]

My scribbled notepad calculation says it'll take roughly 80 million acres of land to replace America's crude oil imports with bacteria grown oil if the 2000 gallon per acre claim proves to be true. That's about 9% of total US farmland.

[Patrick Degan]

If this actually works, we might tell the Middle East, esp. the Saudis, maybe the Israelis, to go screw themselves in short order. (ie: no more $ or military aid.) They just became powerless again...

unless large petrochem companies sit on it until they get a controlling interest in the company that produces it, like with the hybrid...

Which will probably happen.

If Peak Oil is indeed hitting, the petrochemical companies have no motivation to sit on this discovery unless they actually wish to court their own destruction. It's either adapt or die.

[DrMckay]

good point, but how long will it take them to figure it out?

[Starglider]

It seems that everything humans dream up to solve a problem either contribute to another problem or start a new one entirely.

No, that's just selection bias. We comprehensively and decisively solve problems all the time, but since you never hear about them again (whereas the imperfect solutions generate endless amounts of bitching and whining about the drawbacks and compromises) they don't get as much mindshare as they should.

[Ariphaos]

It seems that everything humans dream up to solve a problem either contribute to another problem or start a new one entirely.

What problems did the Smallpox Eradication Program cause?

[Edi]

My scribbled notepad calculation says it'll take roughly 80 million acres of land to replace America's crude oil imports with bacteria grown oil if the 2000 gallon per acre claim proves to be true. That's about 9% of total US farmland.

And that will only help things go so far before soil depletion renders the ground barren. Impressive as this discovery is, there is no magic solution that will enable permanent free energy without fucking up the environment.

All those ecosystems and things we're tapping into and need to tap into to make this shit work took at a minimum tens of thousands of years to get the way they are now and we're essentially stripmining the lot of it in comparatively a few short years. Renewal isn't automatic unless you also keep putting equal amount of stuff back in.

[Starglider]

My scribbled notepad calculation says it'll take roughly 80 million acres of land to replace America's crude oil imports with bacteria grown oil if the 2000 gallon per acre claim proves to be true. That's about 9% of total US farmland.

And that will only help things go so far before soil depletion renders the ground barren.

Are you sure that's a problem with this application? For food crops, nutrients are an issue because most of the plant gets shipped off to be turned into assorted products, ultimately ending up in a sewage planet or coming out the back of an animal somewhere. Here the only product removed from the cycle is the (relatively pure) hydrocarbons. The other elements and compounds presumably remain in the waste products and can be ploughed right back into the soil again.

Impressive as this discovery is, there is no magic solution that will enable permanent free energy without fucking up the environment.

Fusion power is only magic in the 'sufficiently advanced technology' sense. Of course it isn't here yet but neither is this system.

[Edi]

My scribbled notepad calculation says it'll take roughly 80 million acres of land to replace America's crude oil imports with bacteria grown oil if the 2000 gallon per acre claim proves to be true. That's about 9% of total US farmland.

And that will only help things go so far before soil depletion renders the ground barren.

Are you sure that's a problem with this application? For food crops, nutrients are an issue because most of the plant gets shipped off to be turned into assorted products, ultimately ending up in a sewage planet or coming out the back of an animal somewhere. Here the only product removed from the cycle is the (relatively pure) hydrocarbons. The other elements and compounds presumably remain in the waste products and can be ploughed right back into the soil again.

Impressive as this discovery is, there is no magic solution that will enable permanent free energy without fucking up the environment.

Fusion power is only magic in the 'sufficiently advanced technology' sense. Of course it isn't here yet but neither is this system.

A lot of plant material is also hydrocarbons, just in a configuration that is not suitable for oil production right off the bat. So replacement of materials does become an issue at some point.

Basically, if the process works so that they can use bacteria to extract suitable hydrocarbon chains, it should be useful for using it also in waste treatment and elsewhere so that the maximum benefit can be wrung out of things that are currently a net drain.

[AMX]

A lot of plant material is also hydrocarbons, just in a configuration that is not suitable for oil production right off the bat. So replacement of materials does become an issue at some point.

Try to elaborate, please.
The process only really removes C and H (since everything else can be dumped back onto the fields) - and plants don't draw those from the soil; they get C from air, and H from water (this could be argued to be "from soil", but it's also pretty simple to replace).

[Edi]

A lot of plant material is also hydrocarbons, just in a configuration that is not suitable for oil production right off the bat. So replacement of materials does become an issue at some point.

Try to elaborate, please.
The process only really removes C and H (since everything else can be dumped back onto the fields) - and plants don't draw those from the soil; they get C from air, and H from water (this could be argued to be "from soil", but it's also pretty simple to replace).

Indeed. That's what I get for posting from work while trying to juggle three cases and two deadlines at the same time. Point conceded.

[Lord of the Abyss]

It seems that everything humans dream up to solve a problem either contribute to another problem or start a new one entirely.

Of course; we live in an imperfect world. Anything we do is going to have limitations, waste, errors and side effects. That doesn't mean we can't progress to a better set of problems. I'd rather live with the fuzziness of painkillers than suffer though surgery without them, for example. I'd rather pay taxes for a sewer system than have everyone dumping chamber pots out of windows.

[kinnison]

If it works out, its a double-edged sword. Oil supply becomes effectively unlimited, but at the same time there's no longer a push to develop alternatives, so the environment continues to go to pot.

You're only right, as far as global warming is concerned, if the carbon in the gasoline produced by these bugs comes from a fossil source. If it comes from a biological source then it is carbon-neutral.

There are many sources of carbon that are essentially unused and come from carbon fixed within the last year or so - food waste, agricultural waste such as wheat stalks, and so on.

[Tanasinn]

If this pans out favorably, I can't help but wonder what some first world nations will look like when they no longer have to import as much or any fuel.

[His Divine Shadow]

My scribbled notepad calculation says it'll take roughly 80 million acres of land to replace America's crude oil imports with bacteria grown oil if the 2000 gallon per acre claim proves to be true. That's about 9% of total US farmland.

Thats okay since they use what, 20% already for corn ethanol. Just take 10% this and 10% for food production again.

[Darth Raptor]

Yeah, the United States isn't running at anywhere near capacity in terms of agriculture. Nine percent is nothing. This... this sounds too good to be true.

[Beowulf]

In part, it because you can use a lot more of a plant for processing than you can use with methanol. Of course, as time goes on, we'll end up using more cropland to make fuel, because fuel usage will only go up. On the other hand, we don't need to use food crops to make this, and therefore don't necessarily need to use cropland we'd use for food.

[Erik von Nein]

Would this be another technique that could make use of the kudzu plant? I remember the celluose topic a little while ago speculating on harvesting the vast amounts of kudzu growing around the nation and specifically replanting it elsewhere as a fuel crop.