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Category: Microcosm: The Book
Posted on: December 17, 2007 4:02 PM, by Carl Zimmer
This is the sort of thing that made me decide to write a whole book about these bugs...
LS9 Inc., a company in San Carlos, Calif., is already using E. coli bacteria that have been reprogrammed with synthetic DNA to produce a fuel alternative from a diet of corn syrup and sugar cane. So efficient are the bugs' synthetic metabolisms that LS9 predicts it will be able to sell the fuel for just $1.25 a gallon.
Synthetic DNA on the Brink of Yielding New Life Forms - washingtonpost.com
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Comments
Is that a double-negative?
Nice link though! I've also pre-ordered the book :)
Posted by: john dennehy | December 17, 2007 5:04 PM
From the article:The plan is to mass-produce a plain genetic platform able to direct the basic functions of life, then attach custom-designed DNA modules that can compel cells to make synthetic fuels or other products.
I think this is great! They said it would be cheaper than the alternatives now known to get the microbe world working for us for minimum wage!
Dave Briggs :~)
Posted by: Dave Briggs | December 18, 2007 4:44 PM
Alas, there are in fact many things E. coli cannot (yet) do. Like grow at very high temperatures. But here is a question for you --- when they introduce genes into E. coli to make it carry out new reactions, at what point do we stop calling it E. coli and call it something else?
Posted by: Jonathan Eisen | December 22, 2007 5:53 PM