Garry Golden

Of course I laughed at the quick exchanges and ‘ego’ jokes while Stephen Colbert interviewed Craig Venter (of human genome sequencing fame) on the Colbert Report. But my mouth dropped when Venter spoke very confidently about ‘microorganisms that produce hydrogen or biofuels’, and Colbert played right into this big, powerful idea that could really change the world. The idea was heard by the entire Colbert Nation - and that is a start!

The topic was ‘bio energy’ - using microorganisms to produce and convert energy. Any practical applications could re-write the 21^st century energy industry- by ‘greening’ the hydrocarbon fuels industry, accelerating the role of biofuels, and expanding access to energy carriers of electricity and hydrogen.

Used to its full potential, the age of bio energy could create a world of clean, abundant energy- and calm the nerves of alarmists worried about the end of the world. Some believe it is the great story of energy in the 21^st century!

Energy from a ‘bio’ perspective
At the most basic level energy (except nuclear/wind) is the result of sunlight and biological processes. Coal derives from ancient plant life/biomass; oil and natural gas are likely ancient (diatoms) microorganisms. Light is transformed into electrical energy or chemical energy via plants which are eaten by animals/humans. Most all energy gets to us (immediately or millions of years later) through biological energy pathways. The goal of bio-energy research is to identify the organisms that do this conversion well enough to study (e.g. termites/biofuels)- and then replicate it in a controlled environment to observe the phenomena at the molecular level of proteins and genes.

Chemical vs Biological Conversion?
Today we take various forms of energy and convert it using relatively crude methods – we burn coal/natural gas for electricity; and we blow up liquid gasoline for heat/mechanical motion. These methods are cheap but inefficient and dirty. We convert energy largely through chemistry and ‘brute force’ (tip to Juan Enriquez, TED presentation). Biology offers a more elegant approach to converting energy that could make current fuels cleaner and more efficient, and expand what we consider ‘resources’ in the 21^st century. Imagine looking at emissions from coal stacks as food for microbes that produce clean hydrogen or biofuels?

History of Energy Eras
Our world has been transformed by very distinct ‘eras’ of energy- that introduced fundamentally new ways of converting energy into a usable form. While each ‘era’ was once considered strange territory to early pioneers, with no exception, each era continues today:

• The era of ‘glucose/carbohydrate’ energy via plant/human/animal power
• The era of combustion (fire of biomass, steam, gasoline)
• The era of kinetic energy (from wind, hydro, waves)
• The era of electromagnetism (electricity, photo-)
• The era of chemical (electrochemical batteries, H2 fuel cells)
• The era of nuclear

The ‘era’ of biological energy leverages microorganisms as energy producing ‘factories’ that create useable forms of energy (liquid fuels, hydrogen, and electricity).

[Note – ‘bio energy’ is not necessarily the same as biofuels. Biofuels can be created by chemical processes (transesterfication), or biological processes (e.g. cellulosic ethanol). Bioenergy is defined by its process, not end product.

 

What can we expect from this bio era of energy?
The goal of bio energy is to convert raw components (cellulose, light, biomass waste, carbon dioxide, water, etc.) into useable forms of energy – electrons, hydrogen or liquid fuels.

Bio-energy solutions can be seen as both a new primary fuel source (e.g. algae-based biofuels) and a new approach to converting energy into carriers – electricity and hydrogen. (e.g. hydrogen breathing bacteria; microbial fuel cells)

I will skip a Biology 101 lesson – but it is important to understand that bioenergy solutions come from the three ‘kingdoms’ of life on the planet. The easiest way to move forward is to talk about ‘microbes’ or micro organisms broadly to include:

• Eukaryotes – (organism with cells that have nucleus) such as algae with photosynthetic capabilities
• Prokaryotes – (organism with cells without nucleus) bacteria that convert biomass (or other compounds) in liquid fuels or gases (hydrogen; methane)
• Archaea – the most ancient, mysterious kingdom of life on the planet
• Also use role of Bacteriophage (viruses that use bacteria to replicate)

Microbes from each of these three ‘kingdoms’ of life offer their own advantages and challenges in energy conversion. The promise of ‘synthetic biology’ is the combining of the most ideal cellular processes into functional organisms. (Below)

Bio-energy researchers are seeking answers to fundamental questions about energy-related processes shaped by proteins (enzymes), genes that code those proteins, and other bio-structures involved in basic cellular processes.

• How electrons travel through these (protein) enzymes / cellular pathways? (e.g. ‘pathway engineering’)
• The role of oxygen
  (e.g. Some hydrogenase (H2 producing enzymes) do not function well in the presence of oxygen. So engineering the system to block the oxygen can help increase efficiency; or by self selecting bacteria that are more oxygen tolerant.)
• The role of sulfur and carbon molecules (in poisoning a catalyst)
• The role of light (of varying wavelengths)
• The role of metals (e.g. iron, nickel) inside central energy producing cores
• The selection of proteins (light activated proteins known as proteorhodopsins, which can be turned into ‘motors’)
• Growing environments – challenges of managing surface area, temperature, humidity, feedstock, gases (presence of oxygen, et al) – so that microbes can thrive

Bioenergy applications- One purpose, Two roads forward
The first option is to use naturally occuring microbes in controlled environments to produce a desirable output (e.g. biofuels, hydrogen or electricity)

The second option is to design ‘synthetic’ microbes for the same controlled environments. The benefit would be creating microbes with ideal energy pathways that maximize conversion efficiencies - or serve a particular role. (E.g. capturing emissions from a coal plant; processing sewage; light-based environments) The science and ethical issues are clearly more challenging for the synthetic biology path!

How is the progress going?
The tone among researchers is bright and forward looking. And the private sector seems very interested in scalable bioenergy strategies. I’d love Stephen Colbert to just brush up on the last two years of breakthrough research before his next interview with Craig Venter.

In 2006, University of California at Berkeley researchers engineered algae (C. reinhardtii) able to produce hydrogen

In 2006, researchers at the University of Bremen and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution found micro organisms that dissolve organic matter into natural gas.

In 2006, researchers at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory scientists became the first team to measure the electrical charge from proteins disposing of excess energy from a metabolic reaction.

In 2006, research from USC and Rice University started to look closely at how bacteria (Shewanella oneidensis) serve on the anode side of a bio fuel cell (side which gathers electrons). [Bio fuel cells - Enzymes can ‘chew up’ material to produce hydrogen, or they can also chew up hydrogen on the surface of a fuel cell to capture the electron.]

In 2007, teams of researcher from MIT (also Berkeley) used E. coli with proteorhodopsin proteins (light activated) that act as motors with the potential to produce energy or create drug molecules.

In 2007, Penn State University researchers used ‘bacteria (exoelectrogens) to extract hydrogen (via a microbial electrolysis cell) from biodegradable organic substances ‘from grass clippings to wastewater’.

In 2007, researchers from Virginia Tech, ORNL, and Univ Georgia used synthetic biology principles to combine enzymes (not normally collaborating in microorganisms) to convert starch water (polysaccharides/water) into hydrogen. The process works at low temperature and atmospheric pressures- and according to their tests achieves an equivalent of 14.8% H2/mass carrying capacity.

In 2007, researchers at Washington University in St. Louis and Berkeley National Lab shifted our understanding of energy transfer across ‘levels’/states during photosynthesis. Prior to this research it was believed to be a hierarchal stepping or ‘hopping’, but this research suggests it is a more non-linear, quantum behavior of photosynthesis– where the protein sees all possible paths and chooses the most efficient.

In 2007, researchers at Oregon State University designed a microbial fuel cell capable of generating about 10 times more electricity than previously possible from an air cathode microbial fuel cell of the same size.

In 2007, researchers at Saint Louis University in Missouri developed a fuel cell battery that runs on sugar sources.

In 2007, Japanese researchers created a (Ni-Ru) molecule that mimics the hydrogen producing enzymes found in stomach-ulcer causing Helicobacter pylori

In 2007, the US Department of Energy announces three major bio-energy research centers to be led by teams anchored around: Oak Ridge National Laboratory, the University of Wisconsin in Madison, and the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.

In 2007, the Biodesign Institute (Arizona State University) announced a significant research partnership with energy company BP and Science Foundation Arizona (SFAz) to develop a renewable source of biofuel from cyanobacteria.

 

Private Sector….
Real change is not often recognized until private companies get involved (in no particular order or stage of development)… Aquaflow Bionomic, Virent, Nanologix, Inc., LS9, Renewable Synthetic Fuel (RSFuel), Amyris Biotechnologies, Synthetic Genomics, Gulf Ethanol, Verenium, Iogen, Agrivida, Eirzyme, BioHydrogen (UK), UOP, BioMaxx, Chevron, – and dozens of other companies.

What to expect in the years and decades ahead?
Bio-energy is moving forward as expectations for meeting global energy demand grows. While ‘bio energy’ is certainly a new ‘era’ of energy production and conversion, it is not an end to other dominate sources of power. The beauty of bio is in its elegant approach to capturing energy from all systems- from coal to pure light.

Innovation will be driven by new knowledge gained from a range of disciplines: proteomics, genomics, nano-bio systems, and computing (the ‘digitization’ of biology – tip to Craig Venter’s dream!). The ‘game changing’ era of bio energy could be found in the emerging field of synthetic biology which treats biological components as both software/hardware. We will certainly have to deal with the mainstream ethical debates of bio energy, but that’s another story and blog entry!

Learning more…
Researching bioenergy falls into the rabbit hole category. You’ll find no shortage of ideas to explore, lessons to learn and questions to ask. I find the best way to build one’s knowledge base is to start with University level researchers working on fundamental bioenergy questions.

Research leaders include (again – in no ranking or order of importance! This is just a list…)

• Jay Keasling (UC Berkeley)
• Bruce Logan (Penn State University)
• James Dumesic (University of Wisconsin-Madison)
• Kenneth Nealson (USC)
• Michael Seibert (National Renewable Energy Laboratory)
• Andreas Lüttge (Rice University)
• Juergen Polle (City University of New York, Brooklyn)
• Dr. Randy Cortright (Founder of Virent)
• Ed Delong (MIT)
• Jan Liphardt (UC-Berkeley)
• Robert Blankenship (Washington University in St. Louis)
• Shelley Minteer (Saint Louis University)
• David Beratan (Duke University)
• Trevor Douglas, John Peters, Mark Young (Montana State University)
• Chris Pickett (University of East Anglia, UK)
• Thomas Rauchfuss (University of Illinois)
• Daniel (Niels) van der Lelie (Brookhaven National Laboratory)
• Paul King (National Renewable Energy Laboratory)
• Y.-H. Percival Zhang (Virginia Tech)
• And many, many more people not mentioned here…!