Craig Venter and his fourth generation fuels
Geneticist Craig Venter has announced that he is creating a life form that feeds on climate-ruining carbon dioxide to produce fuel. He disclosed his potentially world-changing “fourth-generation fuel” project at an elite Technology, Entertainment and Design conference in California. Among the audience were Al Gore and Google co-founder Larry Page.
Biofuel alternatives to oil are third-generation. The next step, Venter says, is to re-engineer existing life forms that feed on CO2 and give off fuel such as methane gas as waste. Simple organisms can be genetically re-engineered to produce vaccines or octane-based fuels as waste.
Venter’s team is using synthetic chromosomes to modify organisms that already exist, not making new life. The limiting part of the equation isn’t designing an organism, it’s the difficulty of extracting high concentrations of CO2 from the air to feed the organisms. Scientists put “suicide genes” into their living creations so that if they escape the lab, they can be triggered to kill themselves.
“We have 20 million genes which I call the design components of the future,”Venter said. “We are limited here only by our imagination.”
“If they could produce things on the scale we need, this would be a methane planet,”Venter said. “The scale is what is critical; which is why we need to genetically design them.”
Venter anticipates having his fourth generation fuels available within 18 months with CO2 as the fuel stock.
Elaine Warburton www.geneticsandhealth.com
Hi,
Its a great post.I found it is very interesting and more informative article.I’m very happy to hear about fourth generation fuel. i wish Geneticist Craig Venter to be successful in his project and hopefully he will fulfil our fuel needs and he gives life to nature too
Dude Great work!!
Thank you very much for publishing this informative article.I cant able to understand the scientific terms
but i cud understand their goal. It seems a nobel prize is getting ready for venter.
Imagine a backyard bioreactor, which uses biomass and CO2 to produce methane, which replaces natural gas, or can be burned to produce electricity, or as vehicle fuel. Craig Venter is pioneering 4th generation fuel production by engineering an organism that efficiently turns CO2 into fuel. He intends to the make the genetic sequence and methodology available like freeware. Power production in the future will be decentralized.