It's the same stuff that causes violent food poisoning. Texas A&M chemical engineering professor Thomas Wood has genetically engineered a form of E. coli that produces 140 times as much hydrogen than is produced in a naturally occurring process. Best of all, it's very easy to isolate the hydrogen produced. "It just bubbles up," says the professor.
By selectively deleting six genes, E. coli can become effectively a factory for hydrogen powered by sugar. Commercial applications are still a long way off. But the greatest value to Wood's technique is that it would eliminate the need to build an infrastructure for transporting hydrogen. It could actually be produced on site, using some form of sugar molecule.
Source: Science Daily, via TreeHugger
