"Bacteria churn out first ever petrol-like biofuel
...John Love from the University of Exeter in the UK and colleagues took genes from the camphor tree, soil bacteria and blue-green algae and spliced them into DNA from Escherichia coli bacteria. When the modified E. coli were fed glucose, the enzymes they produced converted the sugar into fatty acids and then turned these into hydrocarbons that were chemically and structurally identical to those found in commercial fuel.
"We are biologically producing the fuel that the oil industry makes and sells," says Love.
The team now needs to work out how to scale-up the project to mass-produce hydrocarbons.
The E. coli were fed on glucose made from plants, but Love reckons that if they were to scale-up, they could tweak the genes to produce enzymes that would allow the bacteria to feed on straw or animal manure. This would mean that land wouldn't be needed to grow the feedstock that would otherwise be used for food crops - one of the criticisms of biofuels."
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn23431-bacteria-churn-out-first-ever-petrollike-biofuel.html
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