Bacteria can cut CO2 emissions, create sustainable aviation fuel & sneakers

livemint.com:

Airlines are seeking sustainable sources of fuel. Steel producers are looking to reduce their operating emissions. And sports-apparel makers are aiming to cut the volume of plastic in clothing.

One discovery could help them all: A yeast-like bacteria in rabbit droppings. In Chicago, biotechnology firm LanzaTech says it can take carbon emissions and turn them into ethanol—a chemical that can be used to make sustainable fuels as well as plastics—using the bacteria Clostridium autoethanogenum. But if this sounds like a game changer in the quest for clean-tech solutions, there is a problem.

Despite the company’s technology showing promise, the business isn’t making any money, it is falling short of its earnings predictions and its stock has crashed. LanzaTech was set up in New Zealand in 2005 by then out-of-work biologists Sean Simpson and the late Richard Forster, who had the goal of creating a new source of biofuel. A condition the pair imposed on themselves was that the feedstock for producing the fuel couldn’t also be a source of food, such as sugar or corn, to avoid creating competition for supplies that are typical of ethanol-based fuels.

Being biologists, they turned to bacteria and found that one particular organism could hold the key. Clostridium autoethanogenum has been known about since the 1990s, and was first isolated in the feces of rabbits. It is similar to yeast, which eats sugar to make ethanol—a process that has been used for thousands of years to make beer and bread—except this bacteria eats carbon in the form of gas to produce ethanol.