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Using advanced cell engineering technologies at Synthetic Genomics, the ExxonMobil-Synthetic Genomics research team modified an algae strain to enhance the algae's oil content from 20 percent to more than 40 percent. Results of the research were published today in the peer-reviewed journal Nature Biotechnology by lead authors Imad Ajjawi and Eric Moellering of Synthetic Genomics.
Researchers at Synthetic Genomics' laboratory in La Jolla discovered a new process for increasing oil production by identifying a genetic switch that could be fine-tuned to regulate the conversion of carbon to oil in the algae species, Nannochloropsis gaditana. The team established a proof-of-concept approach that resulted in the algae doubling its lipid fraction of cellular carbon compared to the parent – while sustaining growth.
[...] A key objective of the ExxonMobil-Synthetic Genomics collaboration has been to increase the lipid content of algae while decreasing the starch and protein components without inhibiting the algae's growth. Limiting availability of nutrients such as nitrogen is one way to increase oil production in algae, but it can also dramatically inhibit or even stop photosynthesis, stunting algae growth and ultimately the volume of oil produced.
The ability to sustain growth while increasing oil content is an important advance. Algae has other advantages over traditional biofuels because it can grow in salt water and thrive in harsh environmental conditions, therefore limiting stress on food and fresh water supplies.
Oil from algae can also potentially be processed in conventional refineries, producing fuels no different from convenient, energy-dense diesel. Oil produced from algae also holds promise as a potential feedstock for chemical manufacturing.
The Age of Oil ain't goin' down without a fight.
(Score: 2) by Zinho on Thursday June 22 2017, @02:16PM (1 child)
No coal will be produced again via geology, ever. The Carboniferous Era ended when the global microbiome evolved the tools needed to digest wood, which permanently ended the sequestering of carbon into coal. No amount of time, geologic or otherwise, will produce a new coal seam.
That fact is the reason why we need things like algae biofuel to close the cycle. We may not have the microbes anymore that created the oil and gas we're burning today, but modern medicine and genetic engineering can probably make us something better. Here's hoping that we can soon make a breed that excretes the oil it forms rather than storing it in its cells; our process today looks a lot like running cows through a tree chipper to extract their milk.
"Space Exploration is not endless circles in low earth orbit." -Buzz Aldrin
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 22 2017, @05:24PM
Today we will sequester the carbon in plastics that last for millennia.