11/20/2017 Reducing carbon: a bacterial approach | Bio 2.

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Reducing carbon: a bacterial approach

Happy Earth week to everyone! In honor of such an occasion, I would like to present some work by researchers trying to clean up our atmosphere.

There is a host of literature that says the abundance of carbon dioxide in our atmosphere is caused by humans, and it is responsible for climate
change. It is up to us then to offset our addition of gases into the atmosphere. Researchers from the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory have
recently presented a progressive technology that converts carbon dioxide into biofuels. To do this, they are taking some hints from nature and using
photosynthesis.

Plants make photosynthesis look easy. Normally it is very difficult to mimic photosynthesis because it takes far more energy for us to reduce carbon
dioxide than it does for a plant. A plant uses its energy efficiently to turn carbon dioxide into many complex molecules by using a lot of intermediates.
It is far harder for us to create and store these intermediates than the organisms that do it naturally.

The difficulty in engineering photosynthesis led researchers to enlist some help in the form of bacteria. Combining materials science and living
organisms allows for the best of both worlds: powerful light absorption tools and the natural synthetic capabilities of the cell. The researchers used
nanowires made of silicon and titanium dioxide to capture light. The wires absorb light and donate electrons to a bacteria, S. ovata, which acts as a
workhorse to reduce the carbon dioxide into acetate. S. ovata works well because it is acetogenic, meaning, it can produce acetate from carbon
dioxide in an anaerobic environment. At this point, they can add different types of engineered bacteria that turn acetate into Acetyl-CoA. The
engineered bacteria then use the Acetyl-CoA they created to synthesize any number of valuable chemicals such as n-butanol which can be used a
biofuel and polyhydroxybutyrate (PHB), a biodegradable plastic.

As a proof of principal, using just water, carbon dioxide and sunlight as the energy source, they were
able to produce acetate at a 0.38% efficiency. With the acetate and other engineered bacteria, they
produced n-butanol with 26% efficiency, and PHB with 52% efficiency.

Hybrid technology like this is a huge step in the right direction. Converting harmful greenhouse gasses
to valuable chemicals both reduces emissions and provides necessary products at seemingly no cost
to the environment, other than using up water. It may appear that the efficiency of reducing carbon
dioxide is low, but this is still a novel technology with plenty of room to increase its efficacy. I hope that
technology like this gets the ball rolling on new ways we can at least slow down the effects humans
have on the environment.

References:

https://www.nature.com/scitable/blog/bio2.0/reducing_carbon_a_bacterial_approach 1/2
11/20/2017 Reducing carbon: a bacterial approach | Bio 2.0 | Learn Science at Scitable

Liu, C., Gallagher, J. J. et al. Nanowire-Bacteria Hybrids for Unassisted Solar Carbon Fixation to Value-
Added Chemicals. NanoLetters (2015) DOI: 10.1021/acs.nanolett.5b01254

Yarris, L. "Major Advance in Artificial Photosynthesis Poses Win/Win for the Environment" Berkeley
Lab News Center, April 16, 2015.

Image credits:

Both images come from Liu & Gallagher 2015 referenced above.

https://www.nature.com/scitable/blog/bio2.0/reducing_carbon_a_bacterial_approach 2/2