Think Gene - Latest Comments in Sunlight to Oil via Designer Bacteria

Re: Sunlight to Oil via Designer Bacteria

Fisher Price Bouncer — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 23:47:59 -0000

That was a brilliant idea. When we have that kind of energy that would be very help for us to make an easy way for transportation without causing as much money.

Re: Sunlight to Oil via Designer Bacteria

Quality_Leaflet_Printing — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 07:47:39 -0000

Unlike existing plant alternatives, the raw bacteria oil would be a transportable, near-end product that would save us from having to invest in an extensive new refining and transportation infrastructure.

Re: Sunlight to Oil via Designer Bacteria

Josh Hill — Sat, 23 Feb 2008 00:49:20 -0000

Thanks for the comment. I'm glad some of these posts are spurring some thought provoking comments.

In response to what you said, these organisms wouldn't be designed to survive on their own. Certainly an organism can dominate the ecosystem and cause a lot of problems; an example is when cyanobacteria evolved and made Earth's atmosphere poisonous with oxygen.

I don't think that's a risk with this. First, most organisms channel all their energy into reproducing, generally at least. These custom oil producing bacteria or algae would put all their energy into making oil; this doesn't help them survive, but actually hurts it, so natural selection would not favor them. We could also make them deficient in some gene necessary for reproduction, or modify a promoter of a key gene in the cell cycle pathway, such as one of the cyclin dependent kinases, so that they will only divide when we expose them to a particular chemical. This would also prevent them from "getting out" into the wild.

In essence, these man made organisms wouldn't be able to survive on their own, and if they could, they would die off pretty quickly because they couldn't compete with other more "fit" organisms. The idea is to simply use the cellular machinery and enzymes to catalyze the reaction for us.

Re: Sunlight to Oil via Designer Bacteria

elias — Sat, 23 Feb 2008 00:21:26 -0000

hi !!
well, I think that bacteria couldn't live in the Earth ecosystem. supposing it was hiper-efficient in capturing solar energy, I bet the Earth has seen before such a kind of bacteria, as Evolution has created lots of specimens now disappeared, so my guess is that a bacteria (or organism) MUCH more efficient than its mates in environment, will populate massively thanks to its advantage, then kill its ecosystem, then disappear. My guess is: that has already happened at some point of evolution, but such an organism is not friendly with its ecosystem, because its much more efficient, populates much faster, etc, so it inevitably disappears after all. the point I'm trying to make is there can't be organisms that are much stronger/better/efficient than their ecosystem-mates, because they would overpopulate it. ecosystem is a delicate equilibrium !

I suppose there are two kind of thinkings in front the fear of an engineered-organism delivered to the environment:

-those who think that because it hasn developed with the ecosystem, it will be unable to survive in it, so there's no danger in engineered-organisms delivered to environment.

-those who think that because it has been engineered, it can potentially have a huge advantage in procreating and thus kill its ecosystem.

my guess is that the predating/being-predated or surviving/disappearing is like the function X^3: it has a small 'stable' region around 0 (coexistence), but towards +x it grows super-fast, and towards -x it decreases super-fast (being +y predates the medium, -y the mediu predates the organism. what would be the X ? maybe time ?

this matematical example has just been made up in my head and I dont know if it explains what I mean, I'm trying to suggest that equilibrium seems very difficult, while overpopulating or disappearing sounds as absorving asymptotes.

I'm spanish, pardon my english mistakes (and repeating concepts, I swear I dont repeat as much in spanish :P )

best regards,

Elias