John Glass fuels local research

Washington Business Journal
Friday, October 17, 2008
by Mara Lee Staff Reporter

John Glass is a senior scientist at the J. Craig Venter Institute’s Synthetic Biology and Bioenergy division in Rockville, where researchers are working to create synthetic bacteria that could be engineered to make cheap, abundant fuel. Glass looks the part of a scientist and sounds it too. When asked how long he has been at JCVI, Glass thinks for a moment and answers: 5.25 years.

Why did you become a scientist?

I have wanted to be a scientist since I was a little kid. I have been in biological research now since I graduated from college in 1977. This is the most fun I’ve had in science. I used to work at a pharmaceutical company — we were trying to make better antibiotics or antivirals. But I think that this is fundamentally more important and scientifically more interesting. The world desperately needs new sources of energy.

How could bacteria make fuel?

Water is oxygen and hydrogen. Some photosynthetic organisms can take water and break down hydrogen and oxygen from it, using the energy in sunlight. .... Hydrogen is a fuel. If I can build [an organism] that makes hydrogen by breaking down water, that would be great. Hydrogen, you can compress it like natural gas, you can use it in fuel cells by mixing it with oxygen to produce electricity — there are a lot of options there. But hydrogen is expensive to produce. Efficient biological production, we just aren’t there yet. There are a lot of people working on it. It’s a difficult problem.

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