November 23, 2011 - 3:20pm
Researchers develop 'super' yeast that turns pine into ethanol
http://www.physorg.com/news/2011-11-super-yeast-ethanol.html
If they can engineer yeasts that turn pine trees into fuel, it shouldn't be long before they engineer yeasts strong enough to leaven loaves the size of a Volkswagen.
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When it get loose in your fridge, it might do even stranger things... ;-)
I do not see how they could ever be certain it stays contained. It does present some 'interesting' problems in the future....
Ron
Sounds like we may be headed for Kurt Vonnegut's Ice Nine.
Ice Nine certainly seems a closer possibility now, than it did in 1963, when I first read Cat's Cradle.
Ron
they see it as a scientific problem, and fix that one, but create so many others in the doing. They just don't live in the world as we know it, they live in the labratory, and that is the only thing that matters.
I remember when they discovered cellulose made great cattle feed, well maybe it does, but do humans want to eat cellulose fed animals? I don't think so, at least not ones that are fed more cellulose than cattle normally eat in grass and so forth. I don't think that the cellulose as feed ever took off here, but everyone complains when the Chinese do things like add melamine to flour etc, it did raise the protien value, but it had other problems, so solve one and create more! And mostly for the almighty dollar as well.
And why are we trying to turn trees into ethanol, there are lots of other things that we can do, and be green, and I think that is mostly propaganda anyway, I'm not saying its not good, but they can turn wood waste, and construction debris into ethanol first before cutting down more trees to turn into fuel. How about turning Kudzu into ethanol, probably half the south could make money cutting it for the ethanol industry!