May 24, 2011 14:17 GMT  ·  By
Postdoctoral researcher Iftach Yacoby holds vials containing two of the materials used in the research
   Postdoctoral researcher Iftach Yacoby holds vials containing two of the materials used in the research

Hijacking the natural capabilities of algae and cyanobacteria to help mankind has just gotten a little easier, say experts in the United States. They managed to develop a way of getting bioengineered microorganisms to produce large amounts of hydrogen, which is touted as the fuel of the future.

Algae and cyanobacteria are organisms that tend to live in the water, and that can easily split water into its component molecules – hydrogen and oxygen – in the presence of sunlight. The catch is that hydrogen production is not essential to such an organism.

In other words, the splitting process is meant to produce the compounds needed for the algae and cyanobacteria to survive, and does not aim to create large amounts of hydrogen. But researchers have now found a way of hijacking this process, and making hydrogen production a priority.

Working together with scientists at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, in Colorado, and the Tel Aviv University, in Israel, experts at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) were recently able to develop a new method for bioengineering the organisms according to our needs.

The way this is done, the MIT team explains, is by using proteins that were previously modified in the lab. The addition of these molecules in the microorganisms forces them to give priority to the hydrogen production process over their own needs.

“The algae are really not interested in producing hydrogen, they want to produce sugar,” explains MIT postdoctoral student Iftach Yacoby. He and fellow postdoctoral student Sergii Pochekailov worked with Shuguang Zhang on the new proteins.

Zhang is the associate director of the MIT Center for Biomedical Engineering. He is also the mastermind behind the new multitasking enzyme, which can halt sugar production in these organisms.

Details of the research appear in this week's online issue of the esteemed journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS). The work was supported by several organizations in Israel, the United States and Europe.

Postdoctoral fellowships from the European Molecular Biology Organization covered some of the costs, while additional funds were secured from the Yang Trust Fund and the US Department of Energy’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory.

The new technique is “one step closer to an industrial process. First, you have to understand the science [and then it's all] a matter of time and money. We’ve had minimal money to come this far. With more money, we could do it faster,” Zhang concludes.