Sunday, February 14, 2010

Attractive Cover Letter

PROCESSED IN BACTERIA OF BIOFUEL REFINERY: Synthetic biology has enabled scientists to produce biofuels by using E. Genetically modified E. coli.


  • The bacteria responsible for most cases of food poisoning in the United States have been transformed into an efficient biological factory for chemicals, medicines, and now fuels!
    • The chemical engineer Jay Keasling at the University of California, Berkeley, and colleagues manipulated the genetic code of '
    Escherichia coli, a common intestinal bacterium, so it can chew the plant derived sugar for the production of oil and diesel and other fuels. The results are published in the Jan. 28 Nature of
    , and
    Scientific American. (Unfortunately in Nature can only read if you are enrolled)
    "
    We inserted the genes that have allowed the production of biodiesel [organic compounds] directly from the fatty acids and ethanol
    ," says Keasling, which continues the same: "
    fuel that is produced by our Escherichia coli can be used directly as biodiesel. By contrast, fats and oils derived from plants should be chemically treated before it can be used
    . "

    Perhaps most important is the fact that researchers have also imported the genes that allow the bacterium Escherichia coli secrete enzymes that break down the hard material that makes up the majority of plants, such as cellulose and hemicellulose, in particular, to produce their own sugar needed to fuel this process. "
    The body, the bacteria can produce fuel from plants that are very good in the market without any problem
    , Keasling adds.
    The Escherichia coli secretes directly biodiesel, once the process, it floats in a fermentation tank at the end for which there is neither the need for distillation or other purification processes, or need, as is the case for biodiesel produced from algae, to break the cell is located in the oil which then becomes biodiesel.

    Questo processo innovativo che trasforma la flora batterica tipica dell'intestino umano in una raffineria di biodiesel cellulosica coinvolge gli strumenti della biologia sintetica.
    Keasling e il suo team hanno clonato i geni di alcuni batteri che si trovano nel suolo e che producono enzimi capaci di scomporre la cellulosa. Questi batteri sono già utilizzati per la produzione dei prodotti fitosanitari. La squadra di ricercatori ha poi aggiunto un po' di codice genetico in forma di brevi sequenze di amminoacidi necessario per fare in modo che le cellule dell'Escherichia Coli riescano a secernere l'enzima batterico che, rompendo la cellulosa vegetale, la converta in zuccheri e poi in biodiesel.

    Il processo innovativo è perfetto per fare idrocarburi con almeno 12 atomi di carbonio che vanno dal diesel ai precursori chimici, dal jet fuel al kerosene. Ancora non è possibile produrre idrocarburi a catena corta come è la benzina. “
    La benzina tende a contenere idrocarburi a catena corta, per esempio il C8. Il gasolio e il combustibile per gli aerei, invece, contengono idrocarburi a catena lunga. Ci sono altri modi per fare la benzina, stiamo lavorando anche su queste tecnologie
    ”.

    A conti fatti, gli Stati Uniti, da soli, bruciano circa 530 miliardi di litri di benzina all'anno, rispetto ai soli 7,5 miliardi di litri di biodiesel. Una bilancia dei consumi sbilanciata a favore dei carburanti raffinati derivanti dal petrolio. Keasling, project manager, estimated that a stretch of 40.5 million hectares of Miscanthus giganteus
    , tall grass about three yards, chewed up specially designed microbes such as Escherichia coli are concerned, it can produce enough biodiesel to power and meet the needs of all transportation in the United States of America.

    The Escherichia coli is the most likely candidate to perform such work since it is an organism studied in detail and with a very strong structure.
    Keasling informs us that the Escherichia coli gene mutations are very tolerant. " The surprise there was seen that all organisms need to survive the fatty membranes of their cells. Escherichia coli bacteria if they are deprived of fatty acid biosynthesis are intended to compensate for the depletion of fatty acids . " "
    The Escherichia coli grows rapidly, three times faster than bacteria yeast, 50 times more Mycoplasma faster, 100 times faster than most agricultural microbes.
    "So says the geneticist George Church, a developer of technology and researcher at the Harvard Medical School.
    The bacterium can be transformed into a microbial factory.
    The basic idea is this: to produce a batch of biofuel from a single colony of bacteria through the ability to proliferate Escherichia coli and, after production of the fuel, bacteria already "used" would be replaced by a new colony. This is to avoid going to create mutations that might arise if you continue to use the same culture of microbes. The experiment requires that the process is improved with the progress of technology.
    But if you exit mechanisms and natural processes for biofuel production, the bacterium in question is not the most efficient producer of biofuels. Admits the same Keasling, head of the team of researchers involved in the project, we are currently only 10% of the theoretical maximum efficiency that can be obtained by processing sugar derived from plants. "We'd like
    when we get 80% to 90% or better because then we would be able to market the product effectively. Moreover, to do this, we would need a major process of large-scale production
    .

    However, several companies, including LS9, which helped with the research, as well as Gevo and Amyris Biotechnologies ( founded by Keasling), are working to ensure that the production of fuel from microbes to become more soon be a reality at the gas pump, not just an academic project and utopian.

    Sources: Scientific American

    Posted by admin at 5:22 AM

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