With a Little Help, E. Coli Turns Biomass Directly to Biodiesel

PopSci.com (Popular Science)
By Clay Dillow
Posted 01.28.2010 at 10:32 am

We know how to convert biomass to biodiesel, but the economics of doing so makes many prevailing methods of doing so expensive and unfeasible, keeping an alternative-fueled future just out of reach. But a collaboration between the DOE and private firm LS9 has found a way to coax a strain of E. coli bacteria to produce biodiesel from biomass without further chemical processes, a breakthrough that could pave the way for cheaper, more abundant biofuels.

The sugars dwelling in cellulosic biomass are the target of many alternative fuel schemes, but they can be difficult to get to and even more difficult to process into the fatty acids that we need to make biofuels. E. coli has long been known to synthesize fatty acids efficiently, but natural processes make harvesting those acids particularly difficult. Researchers would like E. coli to biosynthesize indefinitely, but like any organism trying to remain competitive in nature, E. coli doesn't waste energy manufacturing more fatty acids than it needs to survive.

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