— The idea that we could grow fuel from a renewable resource is incredibly exciting. Researchers have been hard at work developing biofuels that will allow us to run our society using easily renewable resources. These efforts have gained a lot of media attention in recent years, and are being touted as a way for the US to decrease its dependence on foreign oil and to mitigate climate change. The longest standing method for creating biofuels is extracting ethanol from corn and sugar cane. More recently, researchers have begun engineering bacteria to produce biofuels, a method that may avoid many of the problems associated with making biofuels from plants, but that also presents new scientific and engineering challenges. Continue reading Green Energy from Bacteria