4th generation biofuels: bacteria-busting genetic bombs?

Posted by Stella Kin

I thought this article was quite amusing - a method of by-passing the energy-intensive chemical reactions needed to extract the fuel from the bacteria.

Anyway from what I've read superficially from Scientific American so far, it seems that:

• the predominant areas of research has been into E.coli using plant-derived sugar to produce hydrocarbons, e.g. bio-diesel and ethanol, even jet fuel and kerosene (but not yet gasoline)
• genes can be imported into E.coli to break down cellulosic biomass, which is a relatively 'inexpensive' sugar supply.
• E.coli is a good candidate because it is an extremely well-studied organism and tolerates genetic changes well
• E. coli grows fast, three times faster than yeast, 50 times faster than Mycoplasma, and 100 times faster than most agricultural microbes
• But max. yield is only 10% from sugar. Needs to be 80-90% to be commercially viable.

LS9 is a company that keeps coming up in google searches. Its processing plant, which will use an existing microorganism to convert sugar cane into biodiesel, will pave the way for large-scale manufacturing and sales in 2012.

Literature review article comparing properties of different micro-organisms: Trends and challenges in the microbial production of lignocellulosic bioalcohol fuels

Another literature review article. I'm only halfway through but it looks really good:
Synthetic Biology for Biofuels: Building Designer Microbes from the Scratch

And another:
Synthetic biology guides biofuel production