Nerro - 30-11-2007 at 08:50
In light of all the recent hype about bio-diesel and bio-ethanol etc, I had the following idea:
Could a fungus be made to store fat?
If so could that fungus be made obese like they did to mice a while back?
And if so, could we make a photosynthetic fungus that makes and stores lot's of fat by uptake of CO<sub>2</sub> and use it to make
bio-diesel?
It's just a thought but it would make a nice solution for all that CO<sub>2</sub> people seem to be so scared of! It would also be
completely "green".
Is anyone doing research into this? I can't think of any search term in google that would yield any useful results...
not_important - 30-11-2007 at 09:32
Yes, fungi can be made to produce usable amounts of oils. For example http://jds.fass.org/cgi/reprint/61/11/1537.pdf
Fungi are non-photosynthetic, they are not plants in any sense. As such they release CO2. part
A number of algae will produce oils, and do consume CO2
http://www.oilgae.com/
In general you starve the organism of nitrogen and it switches into oil production. Some of the problems associated with algae production is keep pure
strains as wild non-oil-producing strains outgrow the oil producers, harvesting the algae and extracting the oil economically, feeding them
concentrated CO2 to boost their growth rate. They require water and sunlight and generally don't like extreme temperatures, this makes using them in
desert regions a little more difficult.
In general photosynthesisers only turn a small percentage of the solar energy intofixed carbon; in plant this averages around 0,2 to 3 percent
although some can get as high as 8 percent, algae can do better.