In recent years, there has been increasing interest in biofuels due to growing concerns about global warming and rising oil prices. Biofuels are generally made by using chemicals, fermentation, and heat to break down the starches, sugars, and other molecules in plants to produce a fuel that can be used by vehicles. However, growing crops, making fertilizers and pesticides, and processing the plants into biofuel requires so much energy that it's questionable whether biofuels are really as environmentally friendly as they might seem on the surface. Plenty of research is already under way to figure out ways to make biofuel production more efficient with the help of microorganisms. Here are just a few examples.

• Companies like Luca Technologies and Next Fuel are investigating the potential for microbial methane production from coal. Their approach is to stimulate native microorganisms that feed on underground hydrocarbon deposits to produce more methane. This could make it possible to extract fuel from coal reserves that have been too expensive to mine. [url]
• Researchers at Purdue University are studying how termite digestion could help improve biofuel production. They found that protists, which live in the termite's gut, may play an important role in the insect's digestion of woody material. Further research could lead to finding enzymes that could one day be used to help improve biofuel production. [url]
• Researchers at UC Berkeley have created a biodiesel fuel using a fermentation process that was once used to make explosives in World War I. The process uses a bacterium called Clostridium acetobutylicum (also known as the "Weizmann Organism") to ferment sugar from various sources -- including corn, sugar cane, molasses, woody biomass, or plant biomass -- and produces acetone, butanol, and ethanol. The fermentation products are then converted into a mix of hydrocarbons that are similar to those in diesel fuel. The resulting fuel burns as well as petroleum-based fuel and has more energy per gallon than ethanol. [url]
• Researchers at UC San Diego have demonstrated for the first time that marine algae can also be used to produce biofuels like fresh water algae. They genetically engineered the marine alga Dunaliella tertiolecta to produce five different enzymes that could be used to convert biomass to fuel. Their finding suggests that algal biofuels could also be produced in the ocean, in the brackish water of tidelands, or even on otherwise unusable agricultural land with high salt content in the soil. [url]

If you'd like to read more awesome and interesting stuff, check out this unrelated (but not entirely random!) Techdirt post.

Brand name pharmaceutical drugs are ridiculously expensive, but how much does it really cost to manufacture a drug? A potentially low-cost method is to use microorganisms -- which are plentiful -- to synthesize chemical compounds. For example, synthetic insulin is now made using genetically modified bacteria. Here are a few other examples.

• Are you depressed? You can use open-source DNA code from the Registry of Standard Biological Parts to genetically engineer yogurt bacteria to make Prozac. The process takes 4-5 days, and anyone can purchase the DNA code online. [url]
• Researchers at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies have created a strain of bacteria that can incorporate artificial amino acids into proteins at multiple sites. This could be used to engineer bacteria to produce a variety of synthetic chemicals. [url]
• Green algae could be a cheaper alternative to bacteria in the manufacture of therapeutic drugs. While bacterial cultures require lots of energy and nutrients to maintain, the algae need only sunlight and carbon dioxide in the air. [url]
• To discover more interesting science-related stuff, check out what's currently floating around the StumbleUpon universe. [url]  

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Bio-engineering is making some serious progress. It seems like the more we learn about biology, the more we can use biology to help solve all kinds of problems that you wouldn't necessarily think would be related to biology. Here are just a few cool examples of biology research that sound like they could serve mankind (and hopefully not in the "cookbook" sense).

• Engineered algae could help clean up radioactive waste. These little organisms might significantly reduce the amount of nuclear waste just by separating lots of harmless calcium from radioactive strontium. [url]
• One small step for man, one giant leap for yeast: multicellularity! Countdown until somebody tries to breed monkeys in a centrifuge... [url]
• Entomologists are looking at insect genes to try to find potential pesticides that bugs are genetically susceptible to. This doesn't sound like the beginning of a scary bio-virus horror flick at all. [url]
• To discover more biotech stuff, check out what's roaming around in the StumbleUpon jungle. [url]  

By the way, StumbleUpon can recommend some good Techdirt articles, too.

Nuclear power seems to have gotten more intense scrutiny recently, so taking a look at other alternative energy technologies makes sense. There's no silver bullet to solve the world's energy problems, but exploring the diversity of ways to generate electricity and fuels is probably a good strategy. Here are some interesting discoveries that might help wean us off burning non-renewable hydrocarbons.

• MIT's Alcator C-Mod fusion reactor is experimenting with a new mode of operation for a tokamak-style reactor design. Scientists still don't quite understand why it works, but it could help make fusion reactors operate more predictably and actually generate more energy than they consume. [url]
• Making biofuels from algae has received some significant funding, but the process of growing the right kind of algae and separating out the fuel is still at least 5-10 years away. A few hundred million bucks should be able to screen a few thousand varieties of algae for optimum biofuel production, though. [url]
• There's also a type of fungus that can produce hydrocarbons similar to diesel fuel. This kind of fungus could also have been originally responsible for creating fossil fuels from ancient organic plant matter. [url]
• To discover more stuff on alternative energy, check out what's currently floating around the StumbleUpon universe. [url]  

As always, StumbleUpon can also recommend some good Techdirt articles, too.

Fossil fuels presumably came from decaying animal and plant matter, so it seems reasonable that there might be a way to replace old oils with freshly-grown biofuels. The trick is getting biological organisms to step up and start churning out fuels on a massive scale. Growing fuel from solar power, water and carbon dioxide would be a great solution, if the process didn't require huge swaths of land and wasn't insanely expensive. Here are just a few links on some ways to grow instead of drill for oil.

• The widespread use of algae to produce biofuels seems like a possibility to directly grow fuel from solar power. We just need about 10 million acres of algae vats that can soak up some sun and spit out fuel (in a cost-effective process). [url]
• Yet another strain of yeast can convert xylose to ethanol. But growing the sugar in the first place seems like an extra step... and ethanol doesn't sound like the best biofuel available. [url]
• Algaes aren't the only microorganisms that can grow biofuels -- cyanobacteria can do it, too. But this super-secret process claimed by a small biotech firm sounds a bit too good to be true. [url]
• To discover more stuff on alternative energy, check out what's currently floating around the StumbleUpon universe. [url]  

As always, StumbleUpon can also recommend some good Techdirt articles, too.