E. Coli Engineered to Produce Record-Setting Amounts of Alternative Fuel

This experiment was geared toward possibilities for future fuel sources. Algea was tested and is still undergoing testing, these discoveries could possible lead to large scale fuel production. For the study, Liao and his team initially constructed an n-butanol biochemical pathway in E. coli, a microbe that doesn't naturally produce n-butanol, but found that production levels were limited. However, after adding metabolic driving forces to the pathway, the researchers witnessed a tenfold increase in the production of n-butanol. The metabolic driving forces pushed the carbon flux to n-butanol.The next step in the research, the researchers say, will be to transfer the study to industry for the development of a more robust industrial process.