🔎 What’s going on?
The gene of E.Coli bacteria has been tweaked to consume carbon dioxide.
👀 Tell me more...
All living things in our world are made up of organisms that can either make their own food (aka autotrophs) or cannot (aka heterotroph). All plants, algae and some bacteria are autotrophs as they use sunlight and carbon dioxide (CO2) to make their own food. Taking this concept further, scientists are now trying to create “artificial autotrophs” from heterotroph bacteria (i.e. E.coli).
Under lab conditions, E.coli bacteria has so far been used to create insulin which is life-changing for many people. E.coli grows fast, is easy to engineer and usually consumes sugars (such as glucose) to grow. Now scientists have tweaked it to eat CO2 to grow instead of giving it off as waste gas.
❓Why should I care?
This breakthrough means new products can be created with CO2 where the ultimate goal is to remove this greenhouse gas from the atmosphere. For example, to create food (i.e. Air Protein) or biofuels (using plants to create fuel) that could power our cars, buses and even aeroplanes. Creating products out of CO2 is a novel way of removing carbon from the atmosphere. However, we are at the proof-of-concept stage, it will realistically take many years to optimise.
🌱 Where do we need to be?
If we are to limit global temperature to 1.5C, then we need to emit no more than 420 Gigatonnes of CO2 into the atmosphere. Whilst other technologies such as Direct Air Capture are progressing, new solutions such as these are worthwhile efforts. Especially if it can be applied to remove the controversy surrounding biofuels. Understandably, using farmland to produce fuel instead of food, with a growing population causes much discussion. If E.coli could create all the carbon required to produce biomass - this would decrease competition for land and it would remove carbon from the atmosphere.
👤 What can I do about it?
Whilst innovative technologies are developed, we ideally should be resorting to nature-based solutions (such as trees, soil and oceans) to remove carbon from the atmosphere. Check out my previous post on how to easily plant trees with the Plant-for-the-Planet App.