Seaweed biofuel

Energy experts believe that seaweed holds enormous potential as a biofuel alternative to coal and oil, and US-based scientists say they have unlocked the secret of turning its sugar into energy.

A newly engineered microbe can do the work by metabolizing all of the major sugars in brown seaweed, potentially making it a cost-competitive alternative to petroleum fuel, said the report in the US journal Science.

The team at the Berkeley, California-based Bio Architecture Labengineered a form of E. coli bacteria that can digest the seaweed’s sugars into ethanol, it said.

Unlike other microbes before, researchers found it can attack the primary sugar constituent in seaweed, known as alginate.

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Scientists claim major breakthrough in seaweed biofuel

by Agence France-Presse