E. coli: from intestinal distress cause to biofuel superhero?

Corn-based ethanol is so 2008, but a team of California researchers have found a potential energy source that could put cellulosic and algae-based biofuels on the “Out” list next.

The source? E, coli.

Yes, that’s right, E. coli as in Escherichia coli, the intestinal-based bacterium that’s been Public Enemy Number One in countless food poisoning outbreaks. Turns out that, when genetically modified just so, E. coli can be primed to pump out longer-chain alcohols that outperform ethanol and come closer to being a ready replacement for petrol.

Researchers at UCLA’s Henry Samueli School of Engineering and Applied Science have succeeded at modifying E. coli in the lab to make it produce several different types of alcohols from glucose, “including isobutanol, 1-butanol, 2-methyl-1-butanol, 3-methyl-1-butanol and 2-phenylethanol.” Such longer-chained alcohols not only avoid the water-absorbing and corrosion problems of ethanol, but offer energy densities that are closer to gasoline’s.

“The ability to make these branched-chain higher alcohols so efficiently is surprising,” said chemical and biomolecular engineering professor James Liao. “Unlike ethanol, organisms are not used to producing these unusual alcohols, and there is no advantage for them to do so. The fact that they can be made by E. coli is even more surprising, since E. coli is not a promising host to tolerate alcohols. These results mean that these unusual alcohols in fact can be manufactured as efficiently as what evolved in nature for ethanol. Therefore, we now can explore these unusual alcohols as biofuels and are not bound by what nature has given us.”

How promising is the E. coli strategy? Promising enough that UCLA has already licensed it through an exclusive royalty deal with Gevo Inc., a California-based biofuels firm.

Could E. coli farming be the next big thing? We can’t wait to find out.