Biofuel to be Made from Tuberculosis Bacteria

A team of researchers at MIT are engineering a strain of bacteria, which is similar to the type that causes tuberculosis, to produce biofuel.

The researchers say that the bacteria are useful because they are hungry for a number of sugars and toxic compounds and produce lipids that can be converted to biodiesel.

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The effort is part of a larger project at MIT to develop biofuels using synthetic biology. In this case, the focus is on soil-dwelling Rhodococcus bacteria, since they are well known to eat a variety of toxic compounds.

Of course, they are also well known due to their similarity to the tuberculosis bacteria. But unlike their deadly cousin, the strains being used to produce biofuel aren’t ones that are bad for you– unless you’re a toxin. In fact, researchers have already engineered strains that can feed on glycerol, a waste product of biodiesel production, and they’ve created one strain that can eat a mix of two types of glucose and xylose.

Now that the basic chemistry and biology has been worked out, the researchers are focused on achieving the highest possible yields, which they’ll be working on for two or three more years, according to the report.

Source: BioEnergySite

Image Credit: jurvetson on Flickr under a CC License

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