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Wednesday, February 2, 2011

Biotech innovation

This is a drivel to the biochemists out there!

Biochemists have figured out how to use cells and enzymes to synthesize and manufacture individual proteins, but have not been able to synthesize or break down cellulose on a large scale. This process goes to show how little we know about photosynthesis and the production of cellulose. I'm throwing out a guess that we're missing something in this field, and there is a lot more to photosynthesis than the biochemistry book has to offer. If we were able to synthesize cellulose on large scale, there would be an incalculable industry for these green building materials (assuming you could make the material hardy enough). Additionally, if we could figure out how to break cellulose down efficiently, we could make a fuel out of all that wasted plant material we are discarding. So, the challenge is this: efficiently go between cellulose and its building blocks (individual glucose molecules) to both enable synthetic building materials and fuel sources (the laws of thermodynamics may throw a wrench into that challenge).

As for the fuel sources, employing nature is going to be huge in this. Check out Solix in Fort Collins, Colorado. They have been working on employing algae to make biofuel. I believe they are on the right track and I wish them the best of luck!

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