Scientists have created cyborg bacteria - microbes
covered with tiny, highly efficient solar panels - that are better than
plants at harvesting the Sun's energy to produce fuel from carbon
dioxide and water.
Photosynthesis provides energy for the vast majority of life on Earth.
However, chlorophyll, the green pigment that plants use to harvest
sunlight, is relatively inefficient. To enable humans to capture more of
the Sun’s energy than natural photosynthesis can, scientists have
taught bacteria to cover themselves in tiny, highly efficient solar
panels to produce useful compounds. “Rather than rely on inefficient
chlorophyll to harvest sunlight, I have taught bacteria how to grow and
cover their bodies with tiny semiconductor nanocrystals,” said Kelsey K
Sakimoto, from University of California, Berkeley in the US. “These
nanocrystals are much more efficient than chlorophyll and can be grown
at a fraction of the cost of manufactured solar panels,” said Sakimoto.
Humans increasingly are looking to find alternatives to fossil fuels as
sources of energy and feedstocks for chemical production. Many
scientists have worked to create artificial photosynthetic systems to
generate renewable energy and simple organic chemicals using sunlight.
Progress has been made, but the systems are not efficient enough for
commercial production of fuels and feedstocks.
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