University of Minnesota Scientists Use Shewanella Bacteria as Platform of Hydrocarbon-based Biofuels

Scientists from the University of Minnesota (United States) are working on a bacterial system which can directly convert carbon dioxide and sunlight into "green" hydrocarbon fuel. The study is funded by the Advanced Research Projects Agency-energy (ARPA-e) program (United States Department of Energy, USDOE) and is led by Professor Lawrence Wackett . The scientific team aims to engineer Shewanella bacteria to produce higher levels of hydrocarbons from carbon dioxide.

The Science Daily website describes the strategy as follows: "The [University of Minnesota] team is using Synechococcus, a bacterium that fixes carbon dioxide in sunlight and converts CO₂ to sugars. Next, they feed the sugars to Shewanella, a bacterium that produces hydrocarbons. This turns CO₂, a greenhouse gas produced by combustion of fossil fuel petroleum, into hydrocarbons".

One of the project scientists, Janice Frias, tried to study the workings of a protein that can transform fatty acids produced by the bacteria into ketones, which can be cracked to make hydrocarbon fuels. The enzyme (called OleA) is said to normally work together with other enzymes to make hydrocarbons, although the mechanism was unclear. In a paper published in the Journal of Biological Chemistry (related information below), Frias and colleagues presents data supporting a theory of how the mechanism of that olefin biosynthetic pathway works.

Related article on the olefin biosynthetic pathway in bacteria (the OleA enzyme) http://www.jbc.org/content/early/2011/01/25/jbc.M110.216127.full.pdf+html.