14 DAY TRIAL // A group of researchers in the United States announces the development of two new types of microbes, which could be used to produce a type of advanced biofuel capable of replacing the standard diesel used in vehicle engines today.
The new chemical has a wide variety of advantages over existing fuel, such as for example the fact that it is produced in the United States, is completely renewable and green, and is very clean. It was developed by researchers at the US Department of Energy's (DOE) Joint BioEnergy Institute (JBEI).
America has been looking for a way of riding itself from its dependency on foreign oil for many years, but thus far its attempts only resulted in fuel sources that have limited uses. In other words, researchers were unable to find a chemical that could be used widely, at a large scale.
According to JBEI investigators, the key to their latest research was synthetic biology. The team essentially engineered two types of microbes – a bacteria and a yeast – which are able to produce a biosynthetic alternative to Number 2 (D2) diesel fuel.
The microorganisms release a precursor to bisabolane, a chemical in the terpene class that is widely used for flavoring food. It also occurs naturally in plants, contributing to underlying fragrances.
“This is the first report of bisabolane as a biosynthetic alternative to D2 diesel, and the first microbial overproduction of bisabolene in Escherichia coli and Saccharomyces cerevisiae,” Taek Soon Lee says.
“This work is also a proof-of-principle for advanced biofuels research in that we’ve shown that we can design a biofuel target, evaluate this fuel target, and produce the fuel with microbes that we’ve engineered,” the researcher adds.
Lee is the corresponding author of a new study detailing the accomplishment, entitled “Identification and microbial production of a terpene-based advanced biofuel.” The work was published in the latest issue of the top scientific journal Nature Communications.
The expert is the director of the JBEI metabolic engineering program and holds an appointment as a project scientist with the DOE Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) Physical Biosciences Division.
“We desperately need drop-in, renewable biofuels that can directly replace petroleum-derived fuels, particularly for vehicles that cannot be electrified,” study coauthor Jay Keasling adds. He is the JBEI CEO, as well as a leading authority on advanced biofuels.
“The technology we describe in our Nature Communications paper is a significant advance in that direction,” he concludes.