How do you turn toxic waste into fuel? Ask the microbe. A team of scientists from the Max Planck Institute for Marine Microbiology, together with a colleague from the Max Planck Institute of Molecular Cell Biology and Genetics, experimentally demonstrates the molecular tricks used by the gas-converting microbe Clostridium autoethanogenum to transform industrial waste gases into ethanol—a finding with enormous implications for sustainable fuel and chemical production.
How an industrial microbe converts carbon monoxide into biofuel
