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The future of fossil fuels: Microbe power, aka black biotech?

By David Biello | Feb 9, 2009 | 9

If you follow biotechnology at all, you probably know that there is red biotech for medical applications (example: using bacteria to produce drugs); white biotech for industrial applications (example: using microbes instead of chemicals); and green biotech for agriculture (example: using genetically modified crops.)

So it was only a matter of time before someone came up with a term for using biotechnology to come up with new fuel sources. "Black biotech" is the phrase Richard Gallagher at The Scientist has coined to describe the rush going on in the life sciences to enlist microbes in a bid to prolong the age of oil in the  latest issue. But  it really comes down to figuring out what's up down in those subsurface oil formations.

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