22 July 2009
Genome pioneer Craig Venter has teamed up with Exxon Mobil to turn living algae into mini oil wells. How will they do it?
Algae that can turn carbon dioxide back into fossil fuel – it sounds too good to be true. How is this going to work?
Algae use carbon dioxide to generate a number of oil molecules, via photosynthesis, as a way of storing energy. People have been trying to make them overproduce the oil and store it. We’re changing the algae’s gene structure to get them to produce hydrocarbons similar to those that come out of the ground and to trick them into pumping these hydrocarbons out instead of accumulating them. As other groups get CO2 sequestration techniques going, we’d like to take that CO2 and get the algae to convert it back ...