Biofuel from Self-Destructive Cyanobacteria

A new method has been found to generate biofuel from genetically modified cyanobacteria.

Cyanaobacteria contains a large fat deposit by having several numbers of fat layers in its body structure. This fat can be converted as a biofuel . Until now extracting fat from the microbes was considered as highly cost incurred method. By this study, researches have been able to invent genetically modified method to harvest fat from the cynobacteria.

They have taken genes from a mortal bacterial enemy, called a bacteriaphage which can infect the cyanobacteria and cause it to die by bursting like a balloon. Researches have inserted these genes into cyanobacterial body and allowed to produce enzymes which can dissolve the fat containing membranes in bacterial body and eventually kill it.

Since these cynaobacteria can be easily found in any kind of water bodies, this method of producing biofuels from microbes can be regarded as potentially a less costly process.

To get the cyanobacteria to more easily release their precious, high fat cargo, Curtiss and postdoctoral researcher Xinyao Liu, placed a suite of genes into photosynthetic bacteria that were controlled by the simple addition of trace amounts of nickel to the growth media.

“Genetics is a very powerful tool,” said Liu. “We have created a very flexible system that we can finely control.”

The genes were taken from a mortal bacterial enemy, called a bacteriaphage, which infect the bacteria, eventually killing the microbes by causing them to burst like a balloon. The scientists swapped parts from bacteriaphages that infect E. coli and salmonella, simply added nickel to the growth media, where the inserted genes produced enzymes that slowly dissolved the cyanobacteria membranes from within

via: sciencedaily- Self-Destructing Bacteria Improve Renewable Biofuel Production
source: ASU