Academia Sinica President James Liao (廖俊智) and a research team yesterday said that they have developed the world’s first synthetic bacterial strain that can convert methanol into valuable chemicals, signaling new possibilities for recycling carbon.
Team members shared their findings at a news conference at the institution in Taipei, after their paper, titled “Converting Escherichia coli to a Synthetic Methylotroph Growing Solely on Methanol,” was published in the journal Cell on Monday last week.
Some bacteria in nature, namely methanotrophs, can convert methane — a greenhouse gas — into methanol and subsequently utilize methanol as a food source, but current scientific techniques could not easily modify its DNA to produce valuable products, said Frederic Chen (陳育孝), the lead author of the paper.
Photo courtesy of Academia Sinica
Chen said that he just last week finished his doctorate defense with the University of California, Los Angeles, where he was Liao’s student.
While existing industrial techniques can convert methane into methanol, they require large amounts of electricity to produce high pressures and temperatures of up to 500°C only to produce low-value industrial products, he said.
Scientists have been hoping to develop a synthetic methylotroph since the idea was broached more than a decade ago, and the Academia Sinica team is the first to succeed in the effort, Chen added.
The team achieved the result by identifying the key enzymes regulating E. coli through a metabolic prediction model and reprogramming E. coli into a synthetic methylotrophic strain through genome editing tools and artificial evolution, he said.
The technique can convert methanol into valuable chemicals, medicines, and fuels, forming a carbon cycle with high green economic value that can help with carbon reduction, he added.
The new strain only possesses three foreign genes different from ordinary E. coli and can be cultivated at a temperature of 37°C, he added.
The research was conducted by Academia Sinica members, Liao said, adding that electron microscopy, proteomics and three different gene sequencing techniques were keys to characterizing the synthetic strain.
All techniques applicable to ordinary E. coli would also be applicable to the synthetic strain, he said.
The journal’s reviewers hailed the findings as “setting the new standard for synthetic biology,” Chen said.
While they are using methanol as the feedstock and the synthetic bacteria as a biocatalyst, they hope to make the strain able to feed on carbon dioxide and methane in a bid to alleviate greenhouse effects, Chen added.
TRAGEDY: An expert said that the incident was uncommon as the chance of a ground crew member being sucked into an IDF engine was ‘minuscule’ A master sergeant yesterday morning died after she was sucked into an engine during a routine inspection of a fighter jet at an air base in Taichung, the Air Force Command Headquarters said. The officer, surnamed Hu (胡), was conducting final landing checks at Ching Chuan Kang (清泉崗) Air Base when she was pulled into the jet’s engine for unknown reasons, the air force said in a news release. She was transported to a hospital for emergency treatment, but could not be revived, it said. The air force expressed its deepest sympathies over the incident, and vowed to work with authorities as they
A tourist who was struck and injured by a train in a scenic area of New Taipei City’s Pingsi District (平溪) on Monday might be fined for trespassing on the tracks, the Railway Police Bureau said yesterday. The New Taipei City Fire Department said it received a call at 4:37pm on Monday about an incident in Shifen (十分), a tourist destination on the Pingsi Railway Line. After arriving on the scene, paramedics treated a woman in her 30s for a 3cm to 5cm laceration on her head, the department said. She was taken to a hospital in Keelung, it said. Surveillance footage from a
Police have issued warnings against traveling to Cambodia or Thailand when others have paid for the travel fare in light of increasing cases of teenagers, middle-aged and elderly people being tricked into traveling to these countries and then being held for ransom. Recounting their ordeal, one victim on Monday said she was asked by a friend to visit Thailand and help set up a bank account there, for which they would be paid NT$70,000 to NT$100,000 (US$2,136 to US$3,051). The victim said she had not found it strange that her friend was not coming along on the trip, adding that when she
INFRASTRUCTURE: Work on the second segment, from Kaohsiung to Pingtung, is expected to begin in 2028 and be completed by 2039, the railway bureau said Planned high-speed rail (HSR) extensions would blanket Taiwan proper in four 90-minute commute blocs to facilitate regional economic and livelihood integration, Railway Bureau Deputy Director-General Yang Cheng-chun (楊正君) said in an interview published yesterday. A project to extend the high-speed rail from Zuoying Station in Kaohsiung to Pingtung County’s Lioukuaicuo Township (六塊厝) is the first part of the bureau’s greater plan to expand rail coverage, he told the Liberty Times (sister paper of the Taipei Times). The bureau’s long-term plan is to build a loop to circle Taiwan proper that would consist of four sections running from Taipei to Hualien, Hualien to
RSS