Scientists Try to Domesticate Mother Nature, 'Super Bugs' for Fuel

Wall Street Journal
By NEIL KING JR.

EMERYVILLE, Calif. -- Nature is stubborn. It doesn't like to be tampered with. Train it to give up an ancient habit, and soon it reverts to its old ways.

For instance, how do you make prairie grass more amenable to being turned into sugar? How do you mutate E. coli microbes so that they gleefully turn that sugar into fuel? How, in short, do you liquefy shredded plants into jet fuel to power a flight to Paris?

Dozens of private firms and government-funded labs are now trying to answer those questions. This year's oil-price shock and fears over global warming have reinvigorated the quest for the ultimate liquid fuel -- one that is clean, cheap, easy to make and doesn't compete with food stocks. Nature took millions of years to turn dead microorganisms into oil and gas. Scientists now want to trick nature into reducing that to a day or so.

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