BIOENGINEERING, WORKING FOR THE ENVIRONMENT

Engineering Microbes for Sustainable Manufacturing and Better Biofuels

 

Like mini-recycling plants, microbes ingest and break down material to create something new. Scientists around the world are now using bioengineering to harness and improve this processing power to apply it towards solving major environmental challenges.

 

Using microbes to create useful products is nothing new. Humans have been doing it for centuries to bake bread or brew alcohol, for example. More recent techniques have employed microbes in green technology, where they are used in the production of biofuels and in the generation of electricity from waste.

 

 

 

Using a non-food feedstock to create biofuels is better both environmentally and economically, which is why researchers from Iowa State University are working to turn corn stalks and sawdust into ethanol.
The process involves heating the feedstock until it becomes a sugar-rich bio oil, then unleashing microbes to feed on the oil and produce ethanol as a by-product. Unfortunately, the microbes have a bad reaction to some of the compounds in the oil, which prevents them from efficiently digesting it.
To work around this, the team is using a technique called directed evolution.
The method works by growing each generation of microbes in a higher concentration of the maligned compounds. Each time the microbes divide, their DNA is replicated, which leads to mistakes in the DNA. The researchers hope one of these mistakes will produce an improved microbe that is tolerant of the oil.

 



The team has already had some success; some of the newly evolved microbes are able to live in slightly higher concentrations of the compounds. Once the ideal microbe emerges, the researchers will analyze its genetic data in order to duplicate it, and will be on their way to creating better, more sustainable biofuels.

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