The fact that such a one-stop industrial microbe can turn seaweed into a variety of molecules has attracted the attention of outfits such as the U.S. Department of Energy's Advanced Research Projects Agency–Energy, or ARPA–e, which has funded BAL work with DuPont to produce other molecules from such engineered microbes. "Because seaweed grows naturally in the ocean, it uses the two thirds of the planet that we don't use for agriculture," ARPA–e program director Jonathan Burbaum wrote in an e-mail. "ARPA–e is directing a small portion of the remaining funding toward an aquafarm experiment to measure area productivity and harvest efficiency."
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Add CommentI can see it now: all the bums will drink a broth of this microbe, and the new Skid Row will be any beach with seaweed.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisHic! Honest occifer - I haven't had a drop!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIt would be great to see corn used primarily for human and animal food again.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisDevils advocate: Will there then be protests that man is depleting the oceans of algae?
As always, the important thing left out of all of these climate change articles is cost. What does it cost to process the seaweed? There is energy involved in harvesting the tons of seaweed from the sea floor and probably significant energy in rotovapping away the ethanol from a 5% aqueous solution. This sounds like promising technology, but any decent scientist should have skepticism.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thiscorn is not fit for human consumption.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAgreed, we should find the answers to these questions with pilot production plants before we go full-bore towards this solution. This will prevent us from making the same mistakes that occurred during our ill-fated attempt to make motor fuel from corn.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIf we are to get completely off oil, which we HAVE to do eventually, we WILL need biological sources of hydrocarbons and plastics like this. Air transportation and long-haul shipping present %5 - %7 of world petroleum demand and are the most difficult applications to switch away from liquid fuels. This is where these liquid fuels will find their niche as personal transportation and overland freight become increasingly electrified. Asking biofuels to provide more than %10 - %15 of even our current liquid fuels consumption is pushing it.
I see something very seriously wrong in this idea.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIt will turn out to be like another manmade engineering catastrophe similar to this city in the western united states that turned into a ghost town. They tried to artificially change things so that the water in the lake would feed the farms with water, but it ended up so that the fertilizer ran off into the water and killed off all plants and fish in the water.
Back to the subject of this article.
Reason why it would not work is that: the e coli bacteria will not only turn the seaweed into ethanol, but it will likely poison off all the other marine life present in the water as well. No more new seaweed will be able to grow because the water is contaminated and it will not be easy at all to reverse anything.
What can work:
People grow seaweed in huge tall multi story buildings like greenhouses in artificial environments in tanks. Seaweed has light to grow and a water environment. Put the e coli in and let them digest the massively grown algae. Collect the ethanol. Then after all of the seaweed has been digested, the e coli is reused again to digest more seaweed grown "in 2nd set of fresh containers".
Then to conserve space, filter out the ecoli from the water along with their contaminants, and then reuse that water and tanks for fresh seaweed and repeat process again.
You really should read the article thoroughly before you comment. It clearly states that E. coli "doesn't like the ocean environment". They won't be putting the bacteria into the ocean to munch on the seaweed - the alcohol would just diffuse irretrevably into the sea. They'll harvest the seaweed & put it & the bacteria into a large tank (called a biorector) where they can control temperature, O2, CO2, etc. to optimize the process.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"Will there then be protests that man is depleting the oceans of algae?"
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisOf course. But only until the new protest of the week comes along.
"Asking biofuels to provide more than %10 - %15 of even our current liquid fuels consumption is pushing it."
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisMy, aren't we the eternal optimist. to quote Yoda, "Always with you it cannot be done."
I could see seaweed farms in the Mississippi River dead zone. That outfall area is severely overloaded with nutrients from farmland runoff and upstream waste treatment facilities.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSadly, #2 yellow corn is consumed by humans. Bloomberg TV had an analyst on a month ago who pointed out several areas in Africa where people were actually eating the stuff in a mash. They'd slaughtered and eaten their livestock and couldn't afford wheat or rice. That leaves corn or starvation.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"corn is not fit for human consumption."
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIt was a staple for the Native Amreicans for thousands of years.
"... and his colleagues took Escherichia coli, a gut bacterium most famous as a food contaminant, and made some genetic modifications that give it the ability to turn the sugars in an edible kelp called kombu into fuel."
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this--- It's important to note that E.coli is not famous for being a food contaminant: It is important to note that GENE-MODIFIED varieties of E.coli ARE famous for being a DANGEROUS food contaminant - as plasmids transferred from toxic bacteria are added to E.coli to produce hemolytic toxins - such as Shiga toxin from transplanted Shigella plasmids, which causes Tropical Dysentery, under a US Army patent developed by microbiologists at the University of Hamburg, and Anthrax Protective Antigen (which protects Anthrax bacteria - not humans), Anthrax Edema Factor, and Anthrax Lethal Factor.
These Frankin-E.coli are the results of "under-reported" government bio-weapons researchers, claiming to be engaged in "vaccine research" - while developing, engineering, and delivering amplified, high-volume, biotoxin production systems powered by vats of fermenting gene-modified E.coli. In over 60 years of "vaccine research" in over 40 different diseases, not one of these programs has actually delivered one single "safe and effective" vaccine - after hundreds of billions of US and Russian tax dollars.
Normal E.coli should be part of every mammals gut culture. Gene-modified E.coli should not be there at all.
Unfortunately, in the US, government bio-weapons researchers are indemnified by the US government - so any harm caused by wild release of gene-modified E.coli varieties requires filing legal briefs against the US government - which can take years to litigate.
The real bad news? This line of bio-weapons research is actually relatively cheap to do and easy to hide, - compared to nuclear weapons - and over 60 third world countries are actively engaged in creating new diseases using genetic engineering techniques.
Which is why, after nuclear physicists, microbiologists suffer the second highest fatality rate from direct executive actions ordered by governments.
Well, given the resource intensity of agriculture, the efficiency of photosynthesis and the sheer amount of energy it takes to move people and the hulking, metal boxes they require to stay safe, I think %10 - %15 is a sound upper limit for biofuels. Unless there's some large breakthrough, that is.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIt really is sad to see this site taken up with the non-evidenced, largely made-up claims of conspiracy wing-nuts such as Gothca... above. On a different note, it might be better if author (Yoshikuni) refrains from making statements such as ,"E coli... doesn't like the ocean environment" and "I can hardly imagine it would do something. It would just be dead."
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAs I am sure Dr. Yoshikuni is aware, E. coli can survive for quite some time in marine waters, and is commonly tested for and found in coastal waters. It is a flora found in the guts of marine fish, and most significantly. plasmids associated with E.coli are known to persist even after after the E. coli becomes "nonculturable" in a marine environment. Perhaps the emphasis would be better placed on genetic modification precluding any survival outside of a bioreactor or fermentation system and limiting the bug usage to one-time runs and fresh inoculates use for each subsequent run.
Well before everybody jumps on or jump off the ethanol band wagon, you may want to check on some solid facts. Striaght ethanol does not do well doe not do well in cold climates. In Brazil all vehicules are flex-fuel. The reason being in some areas in Brazil during the winter the temp reach's about 51 degress F. So to help start the engines at that cold temp, they installed small tanks for gasoline near the engines to start them till a proper temp builds up to run the ethanol. Then there the MPG (miles per a gallon) factor. A regular engine running ethanol will go less miles on a tankfull than a gasoline engine unless you increase the engine comppression which will cost to build a little more and add into it to convert some key componets to rust proof them since ethanol contains a higher moisture content than plain gas. Maybe the best way to use ethanol is to convert all our electric power plants to use ethanol and put charging stations all over including our houses and use some of the cheap electric to fry more foods so we can use that left over grease to power our deisel engines and then we can look into bio-jet fuel like Boeing is looking into for our aircraft and then maybe we can finally tell all them oil producing contries to stick it. All this info I googled and check different sites. This is my rant for the day.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe statement by alan6302 that "corn is unfit for human consumption is not only ignorant, but arrogant.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"Corn" or maize is the staple food of millions of people. It is palatable & nutritious. In fact if it were not nutritious why would anybody feed it to cattle?
Actually I think you mean 'billions', not 'millions'. Corn is a staple in North America, South America, most African countries, and many areas in Asia. Corn shortages also cause more demand for other staples, increasing their prices as well. Soaring international corn prices are a root cause of hunger in many third world countries. There were several news articles during the start of the Arab Spring uprisings in Egypt pointing to this very problem. Mubarek was okay, as long as the people had enough to eat, hunger changed all that.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWow, let's just go through a whole lot of scientific work, time and money for nothing. Leave the seaweed please or we will run out of that too. It goes back to the age old question of why we are not utilizing hemp for all our needs. It grows fast, doesn't deplete the soil but adds to it, we don't eat it so it's not being taken away from a food source and on top of the thousand uses from fuel, oil, clothing, rope, building material and so on, it's the single most sustainable, multi-dimensional plant out there. If the Government could get over the fact that it's related to another amazing plant which they want to ignore as well, we would all be in a better place.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisPlus Genetically modifying is damaging eco-systems, making livestock sick, putting farmers out of work and potentially, like with this seaweed, there are concerns about contamination as with salmon, even if they are kept in controlled scientific areas.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe idea is good but raises the usual concerns about plundering resources and the side effect of pollution through mechanical harvesting etal.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIt presents a good alternative to land based crop usage with growing pressure on food security but surely the biggest push for research would have to be solar / geothermal and hydrogen.
How about addressing the US lack of interest in saving energy? It’s likely that over 80% of US buildings could easily be retrofitted to use a lot less energy and in the age of extensive broadband availability there is no reason that telecommuting is not far more accepted to cut out daily traffic nightmares. Over a third of our energy usage is due to a total lack of interest in saving anything at all.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisYears ago there were huge protests in Mexico City because the price of corn had doubled or tripled. Many people had to give up one of their daily meals because of the jump in prices. All of this was because corn was being diverted to biofuels rather than food.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWe live in a time when it is inexcusable that even one person on this planet should die from the lack of adequate food, and it is upside down thinking that places a priority on energy over the basic need for food.
I applaud these researchers who may have found a path to extensive biofuel resources in a way that could also help return more arable land into food production.
OOPS..!,.. I'm sorry, I just spilt a little bit of the culture medium into the ocean.. Oops,.. What could possibly go wrong..???
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWhen man plays god, god plays back..
OOPs, what if the coliform bacteria genetically 'adapt', very quickly, to the new stressor.., the Ocean??
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this------------
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisL-Phenylalanine is also synthetically produced using e.coli.
"L-Phenylalanine is produced for medical, feed, and nutritional applications, such as Aspartame, in large quantities by utilizing the bacterium Escherichia coli, which naturally produces aromatic amino acids like phenylalanine."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phenylalanine#Commercial_synthesis
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L-Phenylalanine is used to produce Salicylic acid.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salicylic_acid#Production
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Salicylic acid is used to produce Pimelic acid.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pimelic_acid
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Pimelic acid is used to produce Cyclohexane
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyclohexane#History
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Cyclohexane is a key ingredient of the mixture that is Gasoline.
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So, indirectly, E.Coli can be used to synthesize Cyclohexane in large quantities.
So, if you look at the Gasoline FAQ here:
http://www.faqs.org/faqs/autos/gasoline-faq/part1/
and look for:
"What are the hydrocarbons in Gasoline?"
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Cyclohexane is a key ingredient, and especially in the higher priced gasolines.
now, if you go down that list, there might be a way to bio-synthesize almost all of the ingredients in the mixture. Therefore, there is a probably a way to bio-synthesize each component and then mix them together after they have all been synthesized. Ethanol makes alot of sense to people because it _is_ so simple, but if someone could do what I am describing here and put a reasonable price tag on it, then maybe we could drive down the price of gasoline significantly and put lots of oil drillers into a different career.
..Not that I hate oil drillers, but potential job losses may provide economic or popular resistance to the idea of bio-synthesized unleaded Gasoline. However, I do hate high gas prices; and at this point, am wondering if we are being purposely ripped-off in the matter, by people who could make bio-gasoline a reality, if only they would keep making the money that they currently make. But it's also possible that the "ripped-off" part is actually not the case.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisDoesn't it seem like we're always working on a new way to make ethanol, or use alternative fuels, but no-one is ever working on getting rid of a need for gasoline that comes from crude oil? Why is that? Did the oil companies introduce Ethanol as a red-herring? You can work ALL DAY LONG on the ethanol problem and NEVER develop a solution the ACTUAL problem which is that we don't want the crude-oil-based GASOLINE at all, we want a bio-produced Gasoline.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWe want an entirely bio-produced Gasoline and we want it for a fraction of the price of Gasoline that has been refined from crude oil.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisYep, need a low energy way to separate ethanol from water. That's what thy need. Now butanol, from clostridium digesting switchgrass, etc., that separates obits own and rises like crime in milk.. Which is nastier, clostridium or e coli as an industrial bug? Eeewww!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"reason being in some areas in Brazil during the winter the temp reach's about 51 degress F. So to help start the engines at that cold temp..."
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWhere are you from that you consider a wintertime temp of 51F (10.5C)cold? Here in New England, it's right around that today (24Jan2012) & it feels positively balmy!
"OOPs, what if the coliform bacteria genetically 'adapt', very quickly, to the new stressor.., the Ocean??"
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI suggest you go back and re-read my comment #8. This work won't be done IN the ocean, so the bacteria won't have the opportunity to adapt to it.
"OOPS..!,.. I'm sorry, I just spilt a little bit of the culture medium into the ocean.."
They won't be doing this work on the beach, either. The bacteria will be in a bioreactor inside a cleanroom, which means there will be a drainage system designed to keep any potentially hazardous spilled materials from getting into the general water stream. Even if a spill did somehow manage to make it into the general sewage system, it would go to a treatment plant & the bacteria would get killed, just like all the e. coli that gets flushed down our toilets every day.
"Which is nastier, clostridium or e coli"
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThat depend on what species of Clostridium you're talking about. C. botulinum & C. tetani produce that 2 deadliest toxins ever discovered and cause botulism & tetanus, respectively. C. perfringens causes gangrene. C. difficile causes pseudomembranous colitis, with potentially fatal diarrhea. On the other hand, C. sporogenes is currenlty being investigated as a chemotheratpy drug delivery vector.
OK! so you make ethanol and water. But you still need to use energy to distill off the ethanol.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSome researchers have already developed bacteria to convert algae directly into fuel a motor can use.
Anchovies feed on zoo-plankton which feed on plant-plankton, so why harvest algae when all you have to do is pyrolyse fish biomass? Then you get bio-hydrogen and charcoal. Simple!
Now they need to take some bacteria out of a beaver's stomach and see how it does at turning aspen bark into biofuels.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWait a minute... What happened to the guy who had another great "problem solved" biofuel process last year? And the place that had their own two years before that? I'm confused. It's as if the media pumps up this stuff to fill their pages. The only thing that's actually come to pass was the one where we were going to put the oversupply of US Corn to work for an eco-friendly future.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisGood. Hope algae-derived ethanol put corn-derived ethanol out of business. But how fast is the algae-derived process? Process economics are critical.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWhen a researcher says "I can't imagine..." don't believe him. I certainly can imagine DNA getting into bacteria that survives salt water. My new book, The Carbon Trap, incorporates such a scenario where mankind genetically modifies phytoplankton to outcompete native species and sets in motion the collapse of CO2 levels. RainforestPress dot com.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisFor getting the alcohol out from the small beer, you would need to DISTILL it. How much energy would that take? Probably more than what the alcohol would ultimately provide. So, we will end up with a negative energy balance. Also, the residue after distilling off the alcohol might create a huge disposal problem.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWhat is the effect of releasing a genetically modified form of e. coli into the environment? Even if these conversions through the e.col are done under controlled conditions, what is the environmental impact in case of uintended release into the biosphere?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWhat Native Americans ate is very different from what consumers today know as 'corn.' These extremely hybrid varieties that we call 'corn' have been bred for tenderness, sweetness, color, uniformity as well as resistance to certain pests (not to mention the starlink fiasco)and have resulted in a substance that retains some of the qualities of the original corn and its progenitor teocinte, but essentially nutritionally and phenotypically present different traits, oftentimes nutritionally deficient.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe science in this article is pretty poor quality. Lignin is a complex highly crosslinked array of phenyl propylene units that has its biosynthetic origin in phenylalanine. Alginate is a polysaccharide, a high molecular weight sugar polymer, composed of beta-D-mannuronic acid and alpha-L-guluronic acid units. Similar polymers are found in the lungs of cystic fibrosis patients
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAn interesting idea, but more needs to be known about how it might be implemented to be able to imagine its likely benefits and costs. For example, will it be limited to farmed seaweed or will it involve harvesting in the wild? Given the global thirst for energy, will the farming or harvesting be so huge and widespread as to have profound impacts on marine environments? How much more such harvesting will there be than with the current harvesting for food or other non-fuel purposes? Will this harvesting require vast fleets of added harvesting ships, and with what consequences to wildlife, water quality, and pollution? Will cycles of increased growth and harvesting affect ocean life, water chemistry, local climate? Will transportation to digestion plants and/or transportation of the alcohol produced require massive new trucking and shipping fleets and traffic? Can the resulting alcohol actually allow significant reductions in oil drilling, shipping, and demand?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAnd ultimately is the market going to decide if this works and is worth it? Or is there an international body that can determine whether this technology, necessarily involving shared oceans, is sound and whether its benefits to all outweigh its potential costs and damage?
"Will this harvesting require vast fleets of added harvesting ships"
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIf so it could provide a new livelihood for many struggling fishermen.
MadScientist your comment 33, you need to re-read the article especially the second last paragraph of the first page - 'An analysis from the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (pdf) suggests that the U.S. could supply 1 percent of its annual gasoline needs by growing such seaweed for harvest in slightly less than 1 percent of the nation's territorial waters. Humans already grow and harvest some 15 million metric tons of kombu and other seaweeds to eat. And there's no reason to fear the newly engineered E. coli escaping into the wild and consuming the seaweed already out there, Yoshikuni argues. "E. coli loves the human gut, it doesn't like the ocean environment," he says. "I can hardly imagine it would do something. It would just be dead." '.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThis quite clearly states they intend to harvest the ocean, which mean the E. Coli can and more than likely will escape and affect the sea life.
Then you have other considerations how much energy is it going to take to recuperate only 5% ethanol and at what cost. To what cost to the environment will these farms be?
There are many unanswered questions in this article, and a lot more questions that need to be asked by experts before such an enterprise should even be considered for research to be undertaken in the ocean.
E. Coli already lives in the sea, and is found in fish and crustaceans, so for Yoshikuni to make such a statement tells me he has not done his research on his subject, which itself should be a major concern.
If I have read the article wrong then I will apologise but the way it is written, it clearly reads that they intend to introduce the E. Coli to the sea.
Oh, come on. It is REALLY hard to see how this could be harmful. Gather a few tons of seaweed, put them in a tank with the e. coli and distill off the alcohol, when it gets too concentrated and perhaps stops the action of the e. coli. Isn't that essentially what they do in fermenting anything? Except the "thing" is free, and only needs to be scooped out of the ocean and perhaps rinsed off. And before you boil the solution, save some of the e. coli for the next batch. If there is some technical problem or the yield isn't worth the effort, you can always quit doing it, but why on earth wouldn't it be worthwhile to try this? Maybe the unconverted seaweed could be sold in health food stores, too.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisBut it all depends on scale. If the idea is to replace 10% of current gasoline consumption, you are talking about reaping seaweed from something like 10% of US territorial waters. To get a clearer idea of some impacts, more information is necessary - what percent of territorial waters is protected environment? what percent is set aside for shipping lanes? what % is appropriate - right depth, currents, temperatures for seaweedculture? where would this be? Are there areas where yield would be high but environmental impact practically nil? Would any of it displace current food seaweed harvest or raise the prices on such food products? (I would expect the food impact would be far less than current corn-based ethanol, which has played havoc with food prices beyond even corn.)
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI'm not saying yes or no, only that this kind of approach needs a solid informational base, particularly if the goal is substantial scale. It seems that every energy source, particularly on a large scale, has a wide spectrum of costs which are seldom adequately balanced against the benefits. I see this proposal as an interesting opportunity for a demonstration of how that spectrum can be considered and a comprehensive evaluation be available to inform the development of experimental trials or demonstration projects.
The way I read it, they intend to harvest the seaweed from the ocean, not the ethanol. If they tried to execute the process in the ocean, the ethanol would rapidly diffuse out into the water & they'd never be able to recover any of it. It would NEED to be done in a containment vessel. I work in biotech, so I've spent a lot of time around bioreactors.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisFurther to my comment in Nature on this very subject two days back, the altered E. coli bacterium here getting out of human control does indeed pose a very serious environmental concern. Nevertheless, the potential benefit here is undoubtedly a breakthrough research finding, and every avenue to surmount the problem should be given serious consideration by government agencies worldwide. If I may make my humble contribution towards that noble end here:
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI myself was personally involved in experimenting with seaweed that get washed up along miles of the sandy golden beach of Everard Munai, north of the tropical isle of Serendib, now known as Sri Lanka. With a pair of 128 (4’x4’x8’) cubic-foot prototype anaerobic bio degrader tanks, with NO bacterium added, I was able to, in about 3 weeks, pipe in the evolving gas through a half-inch tube into my kitchen and fire up a two-stove gas cooker there quite satisfactorily.
A good bacterium, like the E coli, could have perhaps given me a several-fold increase to what I got, with any bacterial breakout inhibited by burning off the remnant matter and using it as a good fertilizer for the farmland crop (rice)and the various fruit trees (Palmyra,coconut, mango, orange, etc.) in that 30 or so acre coastline property of mine. The leaves from the trees could then supplement the seaweed as biomass, in unending cycles, not only producing fuel but also enriching the land around - serendipitously!
The world is full of Naysayers and why do we need that. If we listen to all those Idiots, we would still be killing each other with stone Axes. Instead, now with time and progress we can let the Terrorist kill us a lot more efficiently and do it with the backing of some religious zealot who wants the world to go back to using stone axes. And so goes the world
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe problem is not the GM bacteria getting out, it's natural bacteria getting in. Unless the reactor is sterile and the feedstock sterilized, natural bacteria will take over and you won't get any ethanol.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThat sterilization will probably will cost some energy, but it's not as problematic as systems using GM algae, where the whole cultivation has to be kept sterile.
could you give me the link of the full journal on this? i'd like to report this in class.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this