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Here\u2019s what you\u2019ll learn when you read this story:<\/p>\n
The process of hydrogenation usually requires fossil fuels to produce hydrogen gas, but a team of researchers has found a sustainable way around that limitation.<\/p>\n
By feeding breadcrumbs to E.coli and adding a biocompatible catalyst, the researchers managed to generate a hydrogen output superior to traditional hydrogenation.<\/p>\n
This new method of hydrogenation could have many applications, including synthesizing polymers and stabilizing vegetable oils.<\/p>\n
Whether by morphing crumpled plastic bottles into vanilla flavoring<\/a> or coffee grounds<\/a> into biofuels, scientists have come up with many ingenious methods of turning garbage to gold. More and more alternative solutions to our environmentally detrimental fossil fuel<\/a> addiction are being derived from things that would otherwise end up in landfills. And now, that list includes a hydrogen fuel made from whatever breadcrumbs you didn\u2019t feed to your local pigeons.<\/p>\n Hydrogenation<\/a> is a process used in the manufacture of everything from plastics and food to pharmaceuticals and cosmetics, and it can be used for applications as vastly different as synthesizing polymers<\/a> or converting unstable liquid vegetable oils into stable fats (which is why \u201cpartially hydrogenated vegetable oil\u201d is often seen on ingredient lists). The problem, however, is that hydrogenation uses fossil fuels and requires sources of energy that leave behind a massive carbon footprint. Those issues led biologist Stephen Wallace and his team of researchers at the University of Edinburgh\u2019s Wallace Lab to devise a method of hydrogenation that relies simply on bacteria and breadcrumbs. It turns out that if you feed crumbs to E.coli<\/a>, the bacteria produce hydrogen gas.<\/p>\n \u201cHybrid chemo-microbial systems utilizing waste feedstocks can outperform electrolytic hydrogenation and achieve carbon-negative outcomes,\u201d Wallace said in a study recently published in the journal Nature Chemistry<\/a>. \u201cThis work demonstrates how microbial metabolites can be generated, intercepted and metabolically multiplexed to support biocompatible transition metal catalysis and sustainable chemical synthesis in living cells<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n Anaerobic microbes like E.coli often produce hydrogen gas in the absence of oxygen if they are provided with organic substances to feed on (along with a catalyst)\u2014a process that allows the microbes to support their own respiration, regeneration, and metabolic processes. Escherichia<\/a> species like E. coli have genes that are specially adapted for this. Unfortunately, despite having some significant advantages\u2014including the ability to hydrogenate many materials by giving microbes biocompatible catalysts<\/a>\u2014there hasn\u2019t been much interest in hydrogenation using living cells. A previous study<\/a> also documented experimentation on genetically modified E.coli, but the strain used was metabolically impaired and difficult to manipulate, resulting in the bacteria taking an especially long time to produce hydrogen.<\/p>\n Wallace wanted to use unmodified E.coli strains to see what their output would be, and chose strains that were naturally geared toward higher hydrogen production and biohydrogenation. The bacteria were contained in an incubator that started out as an aerobic environment, to which researchers added a small amount of glucose<\/a>. Breadcrumbs and a catalyst were added when the bacteria were in the middle of their growth phase, and anaerobic conditions were introduced before the bacteria were incubated again. These strains ended up outperforming the strain used in the other experiment. After metabolizing glucose in the breadcrumbs, the bacteria were then genetically modified to produce certain metabolites, which resulted in even more hydrogen gas production.<\/p>\n Biohydrogenation has the potential to one day be a viable and sustainable replacement for traditional hydrogenation reactions, especially considering that greenhouse gas emissions from biohydrogenation were significantly lower than hydrogenation processes using fossil fuels. Biosynthesis of catalysts and the use of waste bread<\/a> amounted to an even greater reduction in emissions. In fact, using bread that was already headed for the trash, instead of producing something else to feed the bacteria, reduced carbon emissions so drastically that the researchers predicted it would have an overwhelmingly positive effect on stalling (and possibly reversing) the effects of global warming.<\/p>\n \u201cLife cycle assessment confirmed [cleaner energy production] for this hybrid chemo-microbial process, with carbon-negative outcomes achievable using waste-derived inputs,\u201d said<\/a> Wallace. \u201cThese findings underscore the potential of biocompatible chemistry<\/a> to enable the [metabolic] and sustainable synthesis of new-to-nature compounds in living cells.\u201d<\/p>\n You Might Also Like<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"“Hearst Magazines and Yahoo may earn commission or revenue on some items through these links.” Here\u2019s what you\u2019ll…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":383718,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[4419,55874,125837,156986,85,46,16428,141,183189],"class_list":["post-383717","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-science","tag-fossil-fuels","tag-hydrogen-fuel","tag-hydrogen-gas","tag-hydrogenation","tag-il","tag-israel","tag-researchers","tag-science","tag-stephen-wallace"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/383717","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=383717"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/383717\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/383718"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=383717"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=383717"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=383717"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}