Alternative Energy Microbes

Craig Ventor hopes to create an energy bug - a Bacterium that will eat Carbon Dioxide and produce fuel.

He decoded the human genome faster and cheaper than anyone else. He secured his place in the scientific firmament in 2000 when he nearly outran the U.S. government in the race to map the it.

He's the renowned physiologist who engineered the successful effort to sequence it, the "genetic software code" for human beings, which was published in 2001.

On September 4, 2007, a team led by Venter published the first complete (six-billion-letter) genome of an individual human - Venter's sequence.

His next goal - is to replace the petrochemical industry with an alternative energy he calls biofuels!

By manipulating chromosomes he envisions creating an energy bug; a bacterium that will ingest CO2, sunlight and water, and spew out liquid fuel. This is a biological alternative energy.

commercial organism that converts co2

He says, eventually, these life forms could be designed to make biofuels and absorb greenhouse gases.

"We are in an era of rapid advances in science and are beginning the transition from being able to not only read genetic code, but are now moving to the early stages of being able to write code," he said.

Multiple fuels of the future are going to be created by manipulating the genetic code of simple organisms to convert things like sugar or sunlight or carbon dioxide into fuels like diesel fuel and gasoline.



The refinery for the bacterium would be large, bacteria-processing fermenters, similar to how wine and beer are made. The refining would be similar in some ways to ethanol production but with more complex molecules, and therefore fuels that will be much higher in energy content, and will work well with the existing energy infrastructure.

This fourth generation fuel type is generated from carbon dioxide CO2. "People want to bury that CO2 in the ground or pump it into oil wells or coal beds. We want to use that CO2 and the carbon in it to make new fuels."

They're designing fuels that have very little water in them, so that will solve the problem inherent with ethanol-water evaporation issues.

Source - Craig Venter turns from DNA to saving the environment

J. Craig Venter Institute is doing the gene sequencing for the Swine Influenza A (H1N1) outbreak through the Influenza Genome Sequencing Project. The Gene Sequencing is a project funded by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease (NIAID) and the Swine Flu sequencing is part of this project. The latest Swine Flu gene sequences are available on GenBank at NCBI.

"The field of synthetic genomics has the potential for groundbreaking scientific advances regarding energy invention, including the development of alternative energy sources using biological organisms, and the production of new vaccines and pharmaceuticals," claimed Dr. Venter.

Alternative Energy invention is a complex science. Of paramount importance is the amount of energy expended (joules of energy) to create the final energy product. The cheapest energy to date is oil. Therefore this becomes the crux of the issue with respect to the actual cost of alternative energy.

Energy resources must produce more energy than they consume, otherwise they are called "sinks" (this is known as the "net energy" principle). About 735 joules of energy is required to lift 15 kg of oil 5 meters out of the ground just to overcome gravity -- and the higher the lift, the greater the energy requirements. The most concentrated and most accessible oil is produced first; thereafter, more and more energy is required to find and produce oil. At some point, more energy is spent finding and producing oil than the energy recovered -- and the "resource" has become a "sink". So far, no renewable energy system has the potential to generate more than a tiny fraction of the power now being generated by fossil fuels!" Is Peak Oil a hoax? Well perhaps just a misunderstanding.

The good news regarding hydrocarbons is that, as I always suspected, hydrocarbons are not fossil fuels created by prehistoric animal and plants decomposing for millions of years under layers of earthly debris, but abiotic. Oil not 'fossil fuel' that holds oil is created naturally within the mantle of the earth, not by biological origins and Brazil reports massive oil discovery Ultra-deep offshore find challenges 'peak' theorists pushing ethanol.

Irrespective of the Abiotic Oil theory, the oil still needs to be found and extracted. New oil fields can take years to come on line.

So with the prospect of Peak Oil, (let's assume Peak Oil is real) occurring during this period, the World needs to promote and support innovative scientists to find alternative energy sources. Further, a new Alternative Energy Invention that can bypass the harmful emissions into our atmosphere would be a technological breakthrough and would catapult us into a new technology. And we certainly need that right now at this juncture.

An Alternative Energy now is of paramount importance with regard to mankind's standard of living. If we do not find a viable energy alternative, the destiny of mankind could very well enter a new dark ages.

The International Energy Agency authored a report entitled "World Energy Output" which states that "the natural annual rate of output decline is 9.1%". This is much faster than anyone had thought. This means a lower long term supply of oil, and resulting higher long term prices for oil, coal and other energy sources. An Alternative Energy Invention in the immediate future is necessary.

"Over the next 20 years, synthetic genomics is going to become the standard for making anything. The chemical industry will depend on it. Hopefully, a large part of the energy industry will depend on it. We really need to find an alternative to taking carbon out of the ground, burning it, and putting it into the atmosphere. That is the single biggest contribution I could make."

In June of 2005, he co-founded Synthetic Genomics, a firm dedicated to using modified microorganisms to produce ethanol and hydrogen as alternative fuels - biological Alternative Energy.

It was founded in part by himself. His previous company, was a driving force in the race.

Dr. Craig Venter announced that Synthetic Genomics Incorporated (SGI) has partnered with Exxon Mobile to develop biofuels from algae. They hope their work will result in an economically viable low-net carbon emission transportation biofuel which could have significant carbon savings.

They plan to develop a biofuel from algae, for cars and planes, which will not require modification of engines. If successful, this will be an alternative energy invention of great significance.

Exxon Mobil will provide $600m for this next-generation biofuel over five years with half going to SGI.

He discovered more than a million new genes and 1,800 new species by collecting microbes in the Sargasso Sea. Among them are organisms that thrive on carbon dioxide. Venter hopes to re-engineer some of these unique microbes genetically, into "designed species" that may reduce environmental CO2 levels, as well as provide new foods and energy sources. "Biology can do much more sophisticated chemistry than the best chemists," says Venter.


Sorcerer 2 Expedition Site

"The fuel-and-oil industry is a multi trillion-dollar industry, so I think there is room for dozens to a hundred solutions, each of which could create trillion-dollar industries. The same oil that gets burned as fuel is also the entire basis for the petrochemical industries, so our clothing, our plastics and our pharmaceuticals all come from oil and its derivatives. There are multiple billion- or trillion-dollar industries out there that new inventions will help spawn.

Right now oil is being isolated around the globe, and there is a major effort in shipping, trucking and otherwise transporting that oil around to a very finite number of refineries. Biology allows us to make these same fuels in a much more distributed fashion. I envision maybe a million micro-refineries. Companies, cities and potentially even individuals could have a small refinery to make their own fuel. This would eliminate a lot of the distribution problems and associated pollution."

The refineries can be built where the crop is produced. Brazil produces ethanol right at the site of the sugar production, so they don't have huge transportation costs, and they recycle a lot of the waste to help fertilize the next crop.

"I think there will be unique solutions for each country and each region. Places with lots of sunlight and near the ocean could be great sites for our fourth-generation fuels, where all we need is sunlight, seawater and carbon dioxide to create fuels. There are literally hundreds of different possible solutions out there that could be uniquely adapted to each country and each region based on what works for their economy.

We know what's happening from adding CO2 to the atmosphere. We're playing a very dangerous game by adding more and more CO2-it's like playing Russian roulette with the planet. So reducing the amount of CO2 going into the atmosphere is very clearly a positive thing. If humanity can match that challenge, it would be a very important step towards our long-term survival." C. V.