Bio-Based Ideas

This video made me go, "hmmm, very interesting!". It reminded me of a talk by Cheryl Hayashi at Cal State Fullerton in which she talked about properties of spider silk. Anyway, the reason I am posting this video here is because silk is another one of those bio-based materials that although known for a long time, have huge potential for alternative uses in the future.

This is a brief post while I am still mostly writing my thesis. I found another TED video with an interesting way to combine fashion with bio-based products - very interesting indeed.

I recently came across an interesting article posted at Discover which talked about a company by the name of Micropidas . It seeks to convert human effluent into a polyesterbelonging to polyhydroxyalkanoates or PHA family. Why is this important? Plastics often times are derived from oil. Using this bio-based approach cuts that out. In this case, there is an added benefit: they produce plastics while cleaning up the water. And lastly, Micropidas claims that the plastic produced is actually bio-degradable! I haven't had time to research this in more detail, but thought I would share this here.   To read the full, article please go here: http://news.discovery.com/tech/poop-plastic-puts-waste-to-work.html

Paint-By-Numbers Statue of Liberty In the latest Science Issue, the Venter Lab (Gibson et al. 2010) report that they have successfully created an "artificial genome" Mycoplasma mycoides which they transplanted into Mycoplasma capricolum cell to create a new Mycoplasma mycoides cell. In other words, they put the DNA of "A" into an organism of type "B". Just by doing so, they "converted" B into A. This begs the question.... So what? The dream of creating artificial life - that is to say recreate life from scratch with inanimate starting components - has been the dream of some researchers that want to get at the question of:"What is life?" Of these researchers, Craig Venter probably has been the most recognized figure. Craig Venter claims that understanding how one can create life from scratch will also give us the ability to create purpose-driven life-forms. With the current oil spill an example comes to mind where one could cr...

This is still from the SD-CAP Symposium. Another talk I wanted to summarize was Professor Stephen Mayfield's talk titled "Where we are - where we are going" The presentation slides can be found at the following location for anyone interested: http://algae.ucsd.edu/documents/SD-CABsymposiumMayfield.pdf Professor Mayfield’s talk was more of an overview talk meant to introduce the audience to the topic of algal biofuels. It could be divided into 2 parts: the problem, and the solution. The Problem Professor Mayfield started by making the point that between 1900 and today energy has been a rapidly growing market reaching $5.8 trillion today from just $ 0.4 billion. The future energy market is predicted to double in value within just ten years. There is an interesting correlation between energy use and wealth of a nation. The United States according this chart is one of the wealthiest nations in the world while also using proportionally more resources. The future growt...

Last week, I had the fortune of attending the Algal Biofuels Symposium held by the San Diego Algae Biotechnology Center which was founded by Professor Mayfield and his colleagues. The next few posts will focus on what happened at this symposium. Source: http://notafreemason.files.wordpress.com/2008/01/algae-oil.jpg The introductions were held by Professor Steve Kay, who is the Dean of Biology at the University of California, San Diego. Professor Kay noted that algal research has been steadily rising since the early 1990s again. Since the 2000s the growth curve of algal research resembles that of an early exponential growth as determined by number of publications with the keyword "algae". Key to this resurgence in algal research has been the advance of technologies in molecular biology, sequencing, and bioinformatics. Of note is that there has been an explosion in algal biofuels research since late 2008. The exponential growth exponential growth in algal research coincid...

Introduction I was recently asked why this site is called "Bio-Based Ideas". So I thought I would give a brief answer before leading into today's post. There are several reasons for naming this site the way it is. For one, having been trained as a biologist, I write what I know and am interested in. Naturally, many of the posts discussing ideas come with a biological slant. I wanted to make that clear in the title of the blog. But "bio" also comes from Greek meaning "life". And just as life organically grows and evolves, the posts here are meant to capture the richness of diversity of ideas. Lastly, it is my personal belief that the richness of biological ideas will have an increasing impact on our societies especially in this century. And so today with the last post on directed evolution in mind , I want to discuss: What is the bio-based economy? There are two basic ideas the bio-based economy relies on. 1.) Transition to biobased, renewable r...

The fact that our overreliance on fossil fuels is quickly draining easily accessible resources is becoming more known in the public. Now there is talk on several scientific and environmental radio shows that warn of declining phosphorus reserves. The concern over a possible phosphorus shortage may seem contradictory to observations of increased algal blooms and eutrophication of inner water streams – a phenomenon where increased chemical nutrients in the environment lead to algal blooms and suffocation of aquatic life with detrimental  consequences to the environment – which at least in part are caused by increased bio-available phosphorus. All this lead me to the question: Is there really a phosphorus shortage? Phosphorus is the 15th element on our periodic table. In nature phosphorus never exists in its elementary form due to its reactivity [1]. Phosphorus is one of the essential elements of life because it is part of many structures in living cells from simple bacteria to c...

After spending the last few blog posts on different aspects of dissimilatory bacteria , I want to switch the focus to a different class of organisms I have been interested in for a long time now. These are the algae. Algae comprise a large diversity of "sea weeds" and an even larger variety of single-celled organisms that mostly are capable of doing photosynthesis. They include the ordinary sea-weed, and make up a portion of the green slime found around the edges and the bottom of a pond. More exotic types of algae can live symbiotically - that is together with another organism in a mutually beneficial way. Lichens are an example of symbiotic relationship between algae and fungi. More information about the evolution and lineage of algae can be found in this wiki article . Image via Wikipedia Typically, these organisms are either not mentioned at all or only in conjunction with toxic algal blooms. But lately, algae, of course, have been in the news recently because of the p...

I can’t believe how fast time passes. I have been meaning on writing this post up for a long time now. In the last post, I just was introducing Shewanella onedeinensis and its ability to transfer electrons from a variety of organic substrates to metal oxides. Today, we shall look at one possible application for such a microbe: using bacteria to make electricity. This is done through contraptions called Microbial Fuel Cells (MFCs) but to understand MFCs we need to first understand how fuel cells work. There is going to be some detail. But the take-home message here though is: We can use certain bacteria to make electricity out of waste. A fuel cell is a device that produces electricity as long as one provides an external source of fuel and a source that accepts electrons known as oxidants. This is different from normal batteries because batteries simply release the electrical energy stored within them. They get tossed once they are used up. In the case of rechargeable batteries, e...

Recently, there has been a lot of talk about a fungus everywhere. What's the deal with this fungus? As we are turning to the future, we need to look for new ways to fund our energy demands. The November edition of the Microbiology Journal suggests one way this could be done. Professor Gary Strobel and his team publish their work on a new fungus which they name Gliocladium roseum (NRRL 50072). The special property of this fungus is that it can make diesel fuel called myco-diesel. (Myco is Latin for fungus.) It does so by breaking down cellulose which is the tough plant cell wall we use for everyday products like paper. Breaking down cellulose normally requires many toxic chemicals and a lot of energy. Therefore, it is quite remarkable that the fungus can make diesel without the need for toxic chemicals. This discovery is important because, in the future, we could use these fungi or the parts of it to make diesel without the need for oil. Why does a fungus want to produce diesel? G...

So, I have always enjoyed explaining science to non-scientists. To help everyone understand these things better I want to organize these blogs into a short 1-3 paragraph description of what's new and cool for a fast overview, and a few more paragraphs below to give perhaps more background and details about the news. Please let me know if this works. What's the short scoop? Science Journal recently (November 20th 2008) published a report in which the authors show that they can perform "real-time DNA sequencing from a sinlge polymerase molecule". I am thrilled about this report! But why? This technology will make sequencing fast and cheap. For most people, it will be relevant to know that rapid and, in the future, affordable DNA sequencing opens the door for everyone get their own personal genome which can help with diagnosing and fighting diseases like cancer. However, I am excited about this technology because I think that it will allow us to sequence all microorgans...