Chemists at the University of California, Davis, have
engineered blue-green algae to grow chemical precursors for fuels and plastics
-- the first step in replacing fossil fuels as raw materials for the chemical
industry. "Most chemical feedstocks come from petroleum and natural gas,
and we need other sources," said Shota Atsumi, assistant professor of
chemistry at UC Davis and lead author on the study published Jan. 7 in the
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
The U.S. Department of Energy has set a goal of obtaining a
quarter of industrial chemicals from biological processes by 2025.
Biological reactions are good at forming carbon-carbon bonds,
using carbon dioxide as a raw material for reactions powered by sunlight. It's
called photosynthesis, and cyanobacteria, also known as "blue-green
algae," have been doing it for more than 3 billion years.