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February 13, 2006
Bugs Could Be Key to Kicking Oil Addiction (Yahoo!)
The idea mentioned by Bush during his State of the Union speech — called "cellulosic ethanol" — skirts that problem because it makes fuel from farm waste such as straw, corn stalks and other inedible agricultural leftovers. Cellulose is the woody stuff found in branches and stems that makes plants hard.
Breaking cellulose into sugar to spin straw into ethanol has been studied for at least 50 years. But the technological hurdles and costs have been so daunting that most ethanol producers have relied on heavy government subsidies to squeeze fuel from corn.
Researchers are now exploring various ways to exploit microbes, the one-cell creatures that serve as the first link of life's food chain. One company uses the microbe itself to make ethanol. Others are taking the genes that make the waste-to-fuel enzymes and splicing them into common bacteria. What's more, a new breed of "synthetic biologists" are trying to produce the necessary enzymes by creating entirely new life forms through DNA.
[The first thing that comes to my mind is that we are getting closer to making Mr. Fusion a reality. However, then I remember what Dr. Emmett Brown (Christopher Lloyd) said about that device, how it only fueled the time and flight circuits in the third Back to the Future movie. One can dream...BK]
Posted by kuechebj at February 13, 2006 04:50 PM