Bio-Based Ideas

Introduction: Today's post comes again from the famous TED series of talks. This is a great forum because many of the brightest heads come together at these talks to exchange the best ideas. If you want to learn more about what TED talks are, go here . Today's chosen video was just recently posted. Anthony Atala presents his institute's work on growing new organs. Without further ado:

Introduction: With some frequency, I want to introduce really good and inspirational videos without my own comments because the messages of these videos are much better than what I could say. Today's video posts without my comments comes from TED talk series. Sylvia Earle's TED Prize wish is to protect our oceans. Without further ado:

I found these news rather intriguing: According to "Forschung Aktuel" [1],  a German-based science radio news show, there is a research group in Germany that is trying to develop an integrated 2-step biogas reactor. Normally, this would not be really that big of a news but what they use as a source for biogas generation and how they do it is very intriguing. In the quest for renewable non-fossil-based resources, cellulose, the sturdy sugar based plant material, is often considered the holy grail for energy generation as it is in this case. The question is how to generate energy efficiently from cellulosic containing material because as mentioned in a previous post , it is difficult to break down cellulose into usable sugar molecules using traditional mechanical and chemical processes. For this reason, research scientists have looked to nature like the gut of termites and other wood-eating insects, and in this case the stomach of the cow for inspiration on how to break down ...

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...

Introduction In my previous posts, I have talked about ways of using different microorganisms to produce different things that are of use to humans. Two specific examples were diesel from fungi, or oils from algae. There are many other examples, some of which I hope to cover in my future posts. At the current time, the main challenge to many of these by-products is that they are not produced at efficiencies and quantities that allow for economical use. So how would you make fungi produce more biodiesel? How would you make the breakdown of cellulose happen faster? How do you increase oil production in algae? Although each of these questions, involves a deep understanding of complex cellular networks, at the base of each of these problems is a protein that carries out a given task. Increasing efficiencies of these proteins can help to increase the yields of the desire products. Today, we will look at one way, how proteins can be "engineered" by asking: What is Directe...

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...

It has been a while since the last contribution to this site. Today’s blog entry shall be a summary of a journal article that a couple of friends and I started recently to educate ourselves on topics related to bio-based ideas that are of interest to us. Recently, I came across a general article in the Scientist that talked about biofuels production. The article mentioned integrated biofuel productionpipelines that could include the breakdown of agricultural waste products containing cellulose . Cellulose is a complex sugar, meaning that it consists of long-chains of individual simple sugar units such as glucose . The glucose that is released from the breakdown of cellulose could be used for bioethanol production. But it turns out that cellulose is a very sturdy material that is difficult and energy intensive to break down. One way to reduce the cost of break-down would be to rely on enzymes that are known as biological catalysts. Catalysts can reduce the activation energy which is ...