Biofuel is getting there

One of the chief problems with using vegetative material to make biofuel is digesting the stuff that isn't easy to digest (mainly because of the stuff that gives plants structural support, called lignin).  So when I read that researchers have combined a fungus with our friendly bacterium E. coli to convert the indigestible stuff into isobutanol (which has more fuel value than ethanol) that makes me happy.  Because it has been my ongoing belief that two major prongs of an alternate energy strategy will be biofuels for the transportation sector and nuclear energy for the industrial and residential sector.

At least, I hope so.

So, read the news and see if it makes you happy, too.

Microbial team turns corn stalks and leaves into better biofuel

"The fungus Trichoderma reesei is already very good at breaking down tough plant material into sugars. Escherichia coli, meanwhile, is relatively easy for researchers to genetically modify. James Liao's lab at the University of California-Los Angeles provided E. coli bacteria that had been engineered to convert sugars into isobutanol.

The Lin group put both microbe species into a bioreactor and served up corn stalks and leaves. Colleagues at Michigan State University had pre-treated the roughage to make it easier to digest.
 
The fungi turned the roughage into sugars that fed both microbe species with enough left over to produce isobutanol. The team managed to get 1.88 grams of isobutanol per liter of fluid in the ecosystem, the highest concentration reported to date for turning tough plant materials into biofuels. They also converted a large proportion of the energy locked in the corn stalks and leaves to isobutanol -- 62 percent of the theoretical maximum.

The harmonious coexistence of the fungi and bacteria, with stable populations, was a key success of the experiment."

Well, I don't know about you, but that kind of harmonious production of isobutanol really does make me happy.  And it might be good for the Earth and humanity, too.