Bacteria engineered to produce GASOLINE fuel

Modern civilisation depends on fossil fuel, we need them to provide energy to power our cars, heat our homes and even to make medicinal products. Simply put life as we know it today will be very different without fossil fuels.

The only problem is that fossil fuels will not last forever..so there is an intense race to find renewable sources of fuel.

One remarkable approach to this problem is to re-engineer bacteria to produce petrol (gasoline). Bacteria can be re-wired to do this by modifying their genes.

Two South Korean scientists reported in Nature a method for modifying E. coli bacteria to produce petrol and other hydrocarbons that can be used for fuel.

They interfered in the normal metabolism of E. coli by deleting certain genes and enhancing the activity of others to transform the E. coli bacteria into a mini gasoline production unit!

Here is the set up they used to ferment the bacteria and collect the gasoline

Machine that was used to ferment the engineered E. coli and to collect the gasoline. Source: 

Nature 502, 571–574.

The engineered strains could produce roughly 589 mg of petrol per litre.

Imagine one day, we could generate petrol in the laboratory instead of relying on oil drilled from unstable Middle Eastern countries. Thus, would stablise fuel prices and even reduce unnecessary wars over oil!