Okay, we are on week four of our Google hangout. We are waiting for Susan Golden, is going to join us this week. And so our guest question answer. But you know it's a couple days before the fourth of July here in the states so everything is running a little slow for summer, including Susan. But I think she'll be here pretty soon. Now while we're waiting for her, I'm going to answer some of the questions that you guys have sent in. And you know obviously this week's topic was biofuels. We talked about cellulosic ethanol, corn ethanol a little bit about LG biofuels. And so I'm going to take some of those but we'll start here with a good, serious question. Where did this one go? Okay, this is from Leigh, and she says, Scottish scientists have found a way to make biofuels which can be used to power cars from whiskey. Will the choice of the pumps now be a tank of single malt, or will Chivas give us their question? I don't know. Give us a whole new meaning to one for the road. Okay, so, my comment on that. There is zero difference between the ethanol that you put in your car versus the ethanol you put in your body in a drink. When we take, when we make corn ethanol and ferment that stuff and then distill it to use in a car that is vodka. That is just pure grain alcohol. And you can choose to put in an automobile or you can choose to make single malt whiskey out of it. Obviously the value for whiskey is a wee bit higher than what we'll pay in a car. Because ethanol is only 70% of the energy density of hydrocarbon, so gasoline. You only have to pay about 70% per gallon. So a gallon of gas at 4 bucks means a gallon of gas of ethanol is down around 3 bucks. So you're not going to pay more than that or in fact, I think the wholesale price for ethanol right now is about $2.68 a gallon. So obviously if you can sell it as bourbon or single malt, you're going to sell it at, at a higher price than that. And so that's where it will go but obviously the volumes aren't going to be quite as big. So, yes there's always a trade off. And when we talk about food versus fuel, we also have to talk about fuel versus Scotch. All right? Same thing. Same exact guy. Okay. So let's see what some of your other questions are here. Oh, here's a good one. This comes from Hunter, and he says, in creating biofuels, nutrients are left in the fuel and removed from the nutrient cycle. Phosphate, nitrogen, et cetera. Okay we meant, let me click on that so you guys know I'm answering it. oh. I clicked on the wrong one. Here we go. In creating the biofuels, nutrients are left in the fuels and removed from the nutrient cycle: phosphorus, nitrogen, et cetera. What is to be done to ensure that these materials aren't removed from their cycle so that they remain accessible to agriculture? So, that is called nutrient utilization and recycling. It's one of the really important things that we have to do in biofuels. So hydrocarbons. Gasoline is a hydrocarbon. Diesel is a hydrocarbon. So what does hydrocarbon mean? That means it has hydrogen and carbon in it. So there is no nitrogen and there is no phosphate. So when that fuel goes into your tank, there's no nitrogen and phosphate going into it. Some, sometimes a small contamination of those things. But it's not part of the fuel that you burn. So they end up in something else. So when you do, so, and thi-this is true whether you're doing Cellulostics or whether you're doing Algae or Jatropha, or anybody else. When you separate the oil from the rest of the biomass, the oil contains only hydrogen and carbon, and the rest of the biomass contains the nitrogen and phosphate. So, we have to learn how to recycle those. In some systems they're easier than in others. Obviously in cellulosic ethanol, where you're taking the cellulose from say a farm, or taking it from a forest and bringing it to a factory to be enzymatically degraded into sugars and those sugars fermented into ethanol, you end up with a residual, which is minerals, and in those minerals are the phosphate and the nitrogen, et cetera. Then you have to track those back to some form and, and put it on it. In the case of algae at least with sapphire energy, and I think this is true for other algae biofuels as well, you do the extraction and separation of the oil very close to the algae farm. And and then those nutrients can go right back in to the algae tanks. So they're, they essentially replace the fertilizer. So originally when people were doing their first life cycle assessments of algae biofuels, they made the assumption that that nitrogen and phosphate left with the fuel and didn't get recycled. And so some of the early LCA's were not very good for algae biofuels. That the, the, the carbon footprint of them was pretty high, and the reason for that was because it takes a ferromatic carbon to get the nitrogen fertilizer, the phosphate fertilizer and transport it there. But once you assume that those things are going to be recycled then those numbers worked much better. And obviously for economic reasons as well as environmental reasons, we simply have to learn to to recycle those components. Just like there's peak oil you know, which is the time when the maximum production of oil eh, you know, is going to it's going to occur, which was 2005. There's also something called peak phosphate. So phosphate is a mined mineral. We don't produce it from anything, we just mine it. And this is also true of potassium. That's not true of nitrogen by the way. Nitrogen we can make from many different processes. Biologically, you can fix nitrogen from the air and you can also get it from natural gas or from any fossil fuel. So, we can make nitrogen fertilizers, but we can't make phosphate or potassium fertilizers. Those are mined. So you know, as agriculture expands as more people on the planet you know, as there are more people on the planet, we need more agriculture. Agriculture requires phosphate we have to continue to mine it. So we simply have to find a better way to recycle those things. And this is a big area of study. Not only for biofuels but for all parts of, of agriculture. Okay. So here's another one that pops up along the, the same lines. And this comes from Nicholas and he says, what are the biggest policy challenges for biofuels? So, I think there's a couple ways to answer that. so, so what is the direct policy, right? The, the biggest direct policy I, I, I think right now for biofuels is that there is no carbon tax and we don't pay a tax for putting CO2 into the environment. so, you know, that increases greenhouse gas. That's climate change. There's economic consequences to that. Many different companies many different groups have made an analysis of what the cost of putting CO2 into the environment is, because there is a cost to this. You know, when we have climate change and the temperature goes up and we get droughts and we get stronger hurricanes, et cetera. There's, there's a cost associated with that. And so if you analyze all those things, and many companies have, they all sort of come up with a cost of something between $20 and $60 a ton for carbon. All right? So one of the biggest policies challenges that we really need to put forward is, since we know that's what it cost the environment, how, you know, how do we tax the people or how do we make the people who are putting that carbon into the environment pay that cost? And if they did, this would be an enormous benefit for biofuels. Because $60 a ton raises the price of fossil fuel significantly. And that would be an enormous incentive to get biofuels because biofuels have a much smaller carbon footprint, meaning they're putting much less carbon into the atmosphere. So they get an economic advantage of it. So that's sort of challenge number one. Challenge number two is, how do we set policies that allow you know, a starting industry like biofuels to get a foothold? We enormously subsidized agriculture, you know, in this country, in Europe, everywhere. We just enormously subsidize it. It is astronomical the subsidies that we put into the fossil fuel industry. $500 billion per year estimated worldwide subsidies go to bio, go, go to fossil fuels. Some of those are direct subsidies, they just give them tax breaks. You know, and, and some of 'em are indirect. So, in the United States, we spend about a third of our military budget, which is $575 billion a year, so about $185 billion a year of, of our defense budget is directly to defend the shipping lanes and the parts of the world where fossil fuels are produced. So that's a subsidy to those guys, all right? They're not paying for it. The US tax payers are. And, and in Europe the European tax payers are paying for that, all right? So how do we get those same benefits to biofuels so that we can promote that industry? And, and that's an enormous challenge right now. It's a challenge because nobody wants to hear about a new tax. And the other enormous challenge is that, is that, groups that get really large subsidies, whether that's agriculture or the fossil fuel industry, they today have a huge number of employees. So, when there's you know, a benefit given to them, there's a bunch of voters who work in agriculture who are very happy about that and they vote for the people who gave them those benefits. Same for the military. There's a bunch of people in the military, and there's a bunch of people who love our military, and so when we give them an extra $185 billion a year to go make sure that the fossil fuel lines remain open in the Middle East, there's a lot of people who benefit from that. And those people vote. Well, in the biofuel industry, it's a very small industry. So if you gave them a benefit, even though it would be good for the environment and you know, good for the world, it wouldn't help a whole lot of voters. So that, that, that's a significant challenge that we face. And that challenge is usually addressed by leadership that looks into the future and says, I need to make an investment today, not because it helps people today, but because it will help them in the future. And sadly in the United States that's extremely difficult to do right now in today's political environment. If you aren't directly helping some voter who's going to vote for you it seems there're not very many politicians who will sort of step forward and make that commitment to do something. So, that's actually our one, one of our biggest challenges. The second challenge that we face is that the fossil fuel industry and a lot of their advocates have done a really good job over the last few years of convincing people that fracking and you know, sort of oil exploration in this country is going to give us energy independence soon. That's absolutely untrue. The Department of Energy does a very careful analysis of how much fuel we have. What our reserves are. How long it will last. What new technology is delivering. Fracking has increased oil production in the United States three million barrels per day. We're up to about eight and a half million barrels per day. But we burn 19 and a half million barrels per day. So we are ten million barrels short of energy independence. And all the fracking in the world is not going to get us another ten million barrels per day. But, the industry you know, has been very good about promoting this idea. That this wonderful new technology is is not only going to give us energy independence. I keep reading stories that say, oh the price of fossil fuel may be down to less than $40 a barrel next year. You know, the only way fossil fuel would be $40 a barrel next year is if the world economy completely collapsed. Actually worse than it did even in 2008. Briefly the price of fuel dropped down to about 40 bucks a barrel in 2008 when the economy went off the tracks. Came right back up immediately after that. And it hasn't been under a $100 a barrel average in the last three years now. So we're a fair ways off but that, that sort of a, so that's not really a policy, that's an attitude decision. But but that's actually the biggest one I think the biofuels industry is facing right now. That, that a lot of people in America, even a lot of smart people think that fracking is great new technology that has made this idea of peak oil irrelevant, obsolete, untrue and that we are in fact going to find fossil fuel and everything is going to be happy for the next, you know, 50 years. This is complete fallacy. This is complete fantasy. And sadly the world is really going to pay for this in about four or five years when it becomes obvious just what fracking has given us. Fracking is going to make a difference. It's going to give us an increase in about 10 to 12% of worldwide reserves. So instead of running out of oil in 30 years which we're destined to right now, we're going to run out in 33 years. So, it's going to make a difference. It's going to make some people rich, but it is not by any stretch of the imagination a game changer for the world. So that, so that actually is the biggest challenge in bio fuels right now. And we just have to get over that, right? you, we, we have to get leadership that sort of steps up and says, you know, this is good for the world, you know, tomorrow in, in 10 and 20 years from now, so we're going to make the investments to, to get renewable energy going. Okay. So let's answer some more questions here. And this one comes from Nikola and she says, my understanding is that the current energy return on energy invested for biofuels is less than two. Wind and solar are 10 to 25. Is it possible to significantly increase biofuel energy return on investment? Otherwise, it doesn't seem it will be a viable liquid fuel alter, alternative. Okay so let me address a couple of those things first. So the energy returned on wind sorry, on solar is is not anywheres like 10 to 25 fold. It just hit positive energy return about four years ago, and it's about two to one now, on average. So the solar panels that you can buy and put on your house, the energy return on investment of those is about two. Wind is much better. Wind is the best energy return on investment we get. Those big turbines, the, the, 100-meter high ones have an energy return on investment of almost 20 to 1. It takes a long time to get there. You know, you have to run those things for 25 years, but after 25 years, you get an enormous return on it. The energy return on investment for biofuels that completely depends on what biofuel you're talking about. So if you are talking about corn ethanol, that's true. The energy return on investment is less than two. Some people say it's 1.5, some analysis say it's 1.2. The energy return on investment for soy biodiesel is about three and a half or four to one. jatropha, it can be as high, and palm oil or above they're about five to one. And right now algae, the best analysis I've seen, which comes out of a group at Virginia from last year, who went down and looked at the commercial facility of Sapphire, I think their's is 2.9 to 1, something like that. Now that's a 2.9 energy return on investment today. But if we return the if, if we improve, the, the biology of the system, so if we double the biomass then, in theory, we instantly double the energy return on investment in, in, in any of the bioforms, whether it's, you know, jatropha, or, or palm oil. In addition to that, if we can make improvements on you know, building the facilities, which is the biggest cost that goes into these things, then I think we can improve those a lot. So it took solar affordable panels 50 years to become a positive energy return on investment. We're already in positive area now on biofuels. So I think there's a good upside for those. There, there's still, by the way, a great upside on, on solar panels. They get better all the time. So a sol, a solar panel today, has a much better energy return on investment than one five years ago or ten years ago, and in another five years, it'll, it'll be better again still. So all of these things are going in the right direction. Technology can improve our energy return on investment for all of those. And so we just need to keep them going. But we need to think about that carefully. And by that I mean the analysis on corn ethanol is not great. I, I, I don't see that getting an energy return on investment going, you know, much above 1.5 anytime soon. That is a well-established industry. We've been growing corn for hundreds of years. It is very efficiently grown in this country. It is very intensely been studied for a long period of time. The process of fermentation is really well-known. We are not going to miraculously, come up with, yeast or bacteria that-that give us an enormous increase in, in ethanol output. They're sort of at their maximum now, or close to their theoretical maximum now. So the more mature an industry is, the harder it is to have a big improvement in it. So corn ethanol, that one's going to be hard to improve, but lots of the other ones I think we have really good opportunity to improve them. And we are. Right. And, and we'll continue to do that. Okay. Let's see here's one that got voted up a little bit. This comes from Nicholas. And he says how big of an issue is the pest predator infection problem in algae production, and is there anything that can be done to combat this? So growing algae is agriculture. Anytime you have a photosynthetic organism and you're growing it at large scale, that is agriculture. And the biggest problem, so the two biggest problems that farmers have are one, the weather and the second, the pests and pathogens. So the weather, you're always hoping you get the rain in the right amount at the right time, and then you're always hoping that the locusts don't come and eat all your corn before you can harvest it. So this is an enormous problem in all of agriculture. It's what a farmer does every day. He fights the, the pests and pathogens who are trying to eat his crop before he can harvest it. And and he prays for good weather, or he drills a well to get you know, water that, that he can irrigate it with. So algae is agriculture, that means that is the biggest problem they face, right, are, are pests and predators. Now, there's a couple of advantage of, of, of, you know, growing algae over other crops, and there's a couple of disadvantages. So one of the disadvantages is that it's a mon, the way we grow them right now, they're monocultures. It's also the way we grow corn and wheat and everything else. So, so that's not a huge, you know, disadvantage compared to traditional crops, but it's definitely a disadvantage compared to what goes on in the real environment. In the real environment what goes on is you have very complex communities that grow. Like, so if you go down and look at a lake, and it's a lake that has some nitrogen and phosphate in it so it's nice and green, and you do an algae sample from that you'll find out that there are dozens of species in there. There may be three or four that dominate but there will be dozens of species in there. So those are polycultures, or consortiums some people call them. So if there's almost all pests and pathogens or infections are species-specific, meaning that if you get a virus that infects an algae, it tends to infect a single species of algae. Sometimes you get them that go across species, but, but quite often, you know, you'll, you'll get a single virus that just infects one species. The same, by the way, is true in you know, in animals, right? it, it's kind of the rare virus that actually jumps from a pig to a human, or from you know, a chicken to a human. We do get these things right? That's, that, that and sometimes you'll see some of these influenza, you know? They'll call it the, the pig, the swine flu. Right? And so you, so you can occasionally get these to jump, you know, interspecies. But quite often in order to do that the virus has to mutate before. So almost always they, they, they focus on a single species. So what does that mean? That means that if you have lots of different algae growing in your pond, so lots of different species in there, and a virus gets into that pond and kills one of those species of algae, well if you have another ten, the biggest hit you're going to take is about a 10% loss. But in fact, you don't even take a 10% loss because what happens is, the virus gets in, infects that species, kills 10% of 'em, and then and then what happens is the other 90% simply make up for that and, and keep on growing. Okay. So our, our our co-host finally showed up. So just pull you chair over here. So you're live. >> Hi. Sorry I forgot. >> That's okay. This is Susan Golden. It's summer, it's July. You're allowed to forget. And not only that, but I heard a rumor that Susan got a big HHMI grant today, so I expect she might have been out celebrating. >> With a cheeseburger. >> With a cheeseburger for lunch. There you go. Okay. So Susan, since you came in late here's the rules. This is our MOOC, this is our massive online course. We are streaming live on YouTube, and people can send us questions. And when they send us questions over here, they pop up over here, and then people vote on them. And so here's one that's voted up, and we'll click on it, and we'll see what this says. So when we click on it, it pops up here so they can know what question. And it said, you said that energy cannot be created, it can only be transformed. That's right, Susan said that. I remembered. I looked at her video lecture, she did. And also that in one hour the sun gives our planet the amount of energy we need in a year. That's also true, I said that. The question is, what happens with all this energy if we don't use it? Does it return to space? Is it usable? Okay, so, there's a couple things that energy does. The first thing it does is keep us warm. That's why it's warm in the day, and then our atmosphere traps a lot of that, and that's why we keep a nice even temperature on this planet, you know, most of the time. Now true, you know, in the winter it gets colder, and the summer it gets hotter, but by and large, the solar energy that hits on the planet gets converted to heat or to infrared and then the atmosphere traps it, and that keeps it very nice, okay? If you were on a planet that didn't have an atmosphere, like, well, not a planet, but if you were on the moon, for example. There's no atmosphere to trap the heat, so the sunlight that hits there turns to heat, and that heat instantly dissipates into space, so. >> You also have to consider that a lot of that energy that's falling on Earth, it's not heat directly. A lot of it is in the form of electromagnetic energy across the spectrum from ultraviolet through visible light, and into the infrared, which is, in fact the heat portion of it. >> Mm-hm. >> And, so everything that we know of as light and color, that's all part of what's happening with that energy. The energy is hitting an object, and if the object doesn't absorb the energy, which it may absorb it and just use it as heat. It may absorb it and transform that energy in a way that it's given off at a longer wave length. Or it might reflect that energy. And so the things that we see as color are objects that had energy from the sun hit the object, and if the object didn't absorb a particular wavelength, it reflected that wavelength that we see as, as colored light. >> So in other words, it does go back into space. So it either goes back into space as heat which slowly goes out, or it is reflected in another wavelength of light, and then that goes back out very quick. >> And there's, there's another component in this question, which is, can we use more of the- >> Yep. >> Of the energy. And one of the things that is not widely appreciated about photosynthesis is that a lot of what the photosynthetic machinery has to do is protect it from an overload of energy. So organisms that are photosynthetic have, in fact, evolved to deal with the energy they can't use. They use a certain portion of it, and they protect themselves from the overload. And part of what might be possible in terms of improving organisms for biofuels is to engineer and modify them in such a way that they can capture more of that energy and not have to waste so much as heat, or light that they give back off. >> Okay, good. Okay, here's one which has to do with commercial and you guys have voted this up so we'll take a look at this one. This question comes from Doris. And she says, are there any commercial or enterprise-grade companies that are close to profitable levels of manufacturing biofuels? Who would you invest in? [NOISE]. >> Be careful. [LAUGH]. >> Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay, so I, I'm sure everyone knows in this MOOC, but I will repeat this just for, you know, transparency as they say. I am a founder of Sapphire Energy which is one of the algae-based biofuel companies. They make biofuels from algae. So would I invest in them? Well you can't, because they're not a publicly traded company. They're what's called privately held. But I do own some of their shares, and of course I love those guys. But they are not close to being profitable yet. So they are attempting to make biofuel from algae. They have a commercial facility I'm sorry. They have a pilot facility down in Columbus, New Mexico that is 100 acres where they are making biofuels. And they are out trying to raise enough money now that they can make a commercial facility. And that's going to take them about three years to build it. So they will not be profitable before the next three years. >> But they do have contracts and they can make, they can really make fuel. >> That's right. >> And so, they're, they're flying planes, and moving various kinds of vehicles around using oil that they make. >> Yes, now there are several companies that are biofuel companies that are making money. so, as, as you guys know from listening to lectures, corn ethanol is 13.9 billion gallons per year in this country. You know, the quick math on that is about $50 billion, so there are two components of who makes money on that, one is the corn growers and then the other are the people who take that corn and ferment it into ethanol and then sell it to the fuel companies to blend it. Corn today is about $4.17 a bushel, as I just looked it up this morning. As long as it's under five bucks a bushel and the price of gasoline is over 3.50 a gallon, the, the companies that are fermenting corn into ethanol can make money. So all of those companies are profitable this year. Two years ago, 18 months ago, when corn was up around $7 a bushel, all those guys were losing money. So corn ethanol's kind of a tough one, and, and right now I would not recommend to anybody that you invest in a corn ethanol company. >> But we are not licensed to give financial advice. >> [LAUGH] That's right, but I'm not giving financial advice. Okay, now, there are several other companies out there though, that work on aspects of, technology. So for example there's a company called Gebo and they sort of make the designer bugs, the designer bacteria that can help corn ethanol. Who else is out there? Solazyme is an algae company that that someday will make biofuels from algae, but today they actually make most of their money on wrinkle cream and other high-value oils. So lots of the companies that are out there right now, that are sort of sort of the next generation biofuel companies. Those guys are still in the building phase. They're in the technology development phase and they're not yet highly profitable. It doesn't mean they might not be a good company to invest in, because in the future, they may become very profitable. But at least as of today, none of the sort of next generation, generation two or generation three biofuel companies are actually making money on it. >> Unless they're making money on a byproduct. >> That's right. >> On a, on a higher value product. >> On a higher value thing. But, but they're not making money on fuel, okay? But, but as I said, you should just go and look I'm trying to think how many others are out there. Amyris, Solazyme, Gevo those are the ones that I know, they're publicly traded. I'm sure there are few others. Oh, KiOR, that's a company that takes cellulose and thermochemically converts it to fuel. And, they are also a publicly traded company, but I think they are on the ropes right now. I think they're, their system has not proved to be to be very effective. Okay let's see what other questions do we like here. Here's one. Here's one on photobioreactors that we can probably, are confident to answer. From Martin B, have you considered building a photobioreactor with recycled materials like polyethylene terephthalates? The price would be lower. Okay, so the, the price of building a, a, a bioreactor or any system, that's called your CAPEX, right? That's your capital expense that you have to put into the system. And then your operator system is called your OPEX, and if you were a company, those are the two things that you really worry about. How much does it cost me to build my facility, and then how much does it cost me to produce things within that facility? The most important part of at least algae biofuels, when you're talking about a photobioreactor, assuming you're talking about algae or cyanobacteria, the most important part right now is the CAPEX. It is simply too expensive for most companies to be profitable making fuel. So, the companies that are out there like Solazyme that do theirs by fermentation, that's very expensive CAPEX. That's why they can't make fuel today be profitable, but they can make high-value things like wrinkle cream or, or high-value oils. So getting the photobioreactor as cheap as you possibly can is essential to economic viability. >> But I wouldn't, I don't think the vessel is where most of the expense is. So even for the photobioreactor, the, the controllers, the electronics. >> Yeah. >> The specifications, the design, the construction material is probably not the biggest cost. >> But any way you can make it cheaper is better. And you have to make all of these things cheaper. Simpler is better. So I know that, that you know, in the ponds that we have here on campus we try to make those as simple as, as we possibly could. We actually make bioreactors hanging bioreactors out of simple thin-walled flexible plastic tube which I think is polyethylene, but it's not recycled. But you know what? Since you asked, I'm going to look in to find out if we can get recycled material, could that would definitely be better. >> And it is important though, to consider the the optics also in terms of whether or not certain wavelengths would be filtered out and if that's important. >> Okay, here's a good one on genetics. Because Susan and I are certainly confident to answer this, that's what our PhD's are in. Is genomic editing- >> [INAUDIBLE] last words. >> Yeah [LAUGH], is genomic editing tech being employed to hasten the yield improvements of biofuel crops like jatropha and algae? I'm going to let Susan go first, and then I will say something on that. >> Well, I have to say I'm not sure exactly what you mean by genomic editing. I don't know if you mean genetic engineering. With jatropha, the first step has just been real genetics, just reading, because none of it had been done. So it turned out that plants that were out there were all from one particular variety, and not even a particularly good variety at that. And so SG Biofuels, is it? >> Yeah. >> SG Biofuels has gone back to where jatropha came from to look and find other varieties. And in fact, it turns out that they, just by breeding, they were able to dramatically improve a lot of the properties. So if there's been no domestication at all, sometimes just standard breeding works well. And in general, I would say everybody who's working with organisms for biofuels is researching genetic improvements including genome modification. And how important that's going to be is, I think it's going to be important for everybody. Everyone knows that down the road, it's going to be important. They're,you're going to want modified organisms that you, that you employ out there. But they're in different stages at different companies. >> Yeah and again, genomic editing is kind of a, I don't know. It the, there's lots of ways to interpret it. But for example, in jatropha, what they do is they actually do genome sequencing assisted breeding. So on that one, what they've done is they can actually go back in, and look at by, by sequencing the genome, not by, not by molecular genetics, it's still traditional plant breathing. But after they make a cross between two distant you know, jatropha strains or lines, then they can quickly tell how productive they're going to be by sequencing the progeny before they're grown up. So long before they're grown up and do field tests, they already have an idea just from looking at the sequence of it, and something called SNPs, single nucleotide polymorphism they, they can tell which way one of the, you know, one, one of the strains is going to go. >> And it helps to identify which genes in the genome, or which portion of the genome is responsible for a particular traits of interest. >> Yeah, so that's an enormous benefit for them you know, SG Biofuels had really made some great advances. I think they're up to about 600 gallons per acre per year today, from 200 gallons about 4 years ago. So they've had a 3-fold, 300% improvement on that, and that was all brought about by sort of having put technologies. Not genetic engineering though, they have not learned yet how to, how to introduce genes into their genome that altered the traits. In algae, we have done that. certainly, Susan has been doing this for many, many years since cyanobacteria. But now we, we've also figured out how to do an analogy. So we think about not only traditional breeding, but also genetic engineering to improve it. And, and that can come in many different forms. That could be that we you know, introduced genes and enzymes that altered lipid content for example. Or maybe we give them some resistance to some predator pathogen. So, so lots of different ways where molecular science can have an impact on this. [NOISE] Okay, let's see what else we have. Oh, here we have one about CalTech. This will take an opportunity to make fun of CalTech while we answer this question. CalTech is working on synthetic photosynthesis which seems to make sense in terms of optimizing the photon to electron to hydrocarbon yield, rather than relying on Mother Nature. Thoughts? I'm going to let Susan say something, then I'm going to say something more cynical. >> Well, first of all the, CalTech is not the only one doing this. There are a number of groups that are trying synthetic photosynthesis, and it's an outstanding idea to pursue. However, Mother Nature has been doing it for, for more than 3 billion years. And, and it is very complex. So there are a lot of problems to solve. And one idea in terms of synthetic photosynthesis is not to really try to go all the way from photon to hydrocarbon maybe, but to have some portion of that synthetic. And it's, it's a very big problem. It's a good one to work on, but it's unlikely that something synthetic is going to replace the entirety of photosynthesis anytime in the near future. >> Yeah, okay and, and my answer was going to be similar but a little more cynical, to say that it's the hubris of man to think that we, we can outsmart Mother Nature, right? As Susan pointed out, in 3 billion years, you can try a lot of different things. >> Now, but what we can do, I mean, and, and the reason that we're I kind of alluded to this with an answer earlier. Mother Nature has selected for organisms that do well under natural conditions, not farming conditions. And so a lot of the, there, there are actually limitations on photosynthesis that are there because they help to protect the organism- >> Yeah. >> From environmental issues that aren't issues if we're going to put them in a pond and scorch them with air and protect them in various ways. Which means that I do think that there's a lot of leeway to improve photosynthesis other, other, over what Mother Nature has selected for, because we'll select for different things. Starting from scratch to build synthetic systems that do as well as photosynthesis, that, that's a very [SOUND] tall order. >> Okay, and then I'm, I'm just going to add to that that, so although that I'm, I'm, I, I guess skeptical is the word I would say, that we were going to improve photosynthesis per se because I, again I said, that that's been around for billions of years. We can absolutely impact where the energy captured by photosynthesis ends up. Because as Susan said, you know, these organisms evolve not to be of benefit to us and to give us hydrocarbon, they evolve to survive. So they spend a fair amount of their energy on what we might consider, you know, from our, you know, perspective that, that, that we would consider non-productive use of their time. Now, they, they would have cycles, for example, that are running in the background to make certain that if an adverse event happens today, that I don't die. Because if you're an organism and you die, then that's not a very good evolutionary outcome for you, okay? So therefore, you sort of have to build in a budget into your life cycle that allows you to respond to a lot of different things. Now, once we start farming them, we can sort of take care of many things for them, right? And that means that they can devote more their energy into pure hydrocarbon output, for example. So even though it might not be a good idea for them, you know, from a survival, and a competition, and evolutionary perspective, it's a great idea, you know, as far as we're concerned, for them to make a lot more hydrocarbon. So we can certainly manipulate the system to our advantage, and we can certainly select and engineer things that make them more productive from, from our perspective. But I think it's going to be much tougher to actually improve, for example, the quantum yield of photosynthesis you know, in, in, in a synthetic way. >> But before you leave that though but if you break it down, parts of it might be possible to be very good in terms of electron transfer. So the idea of short-circuiting photosynthesis, maybe you don't need to go all the way from photocarbon to hydrocarbon, but you might want a way to take photons and get electrons that you can short-circuit in another way. And the, there are some examples of that having been done and, and getting and getting splitting water, and getting electrons to move through in, in synthetic systems. And, that might get you some conversion of the energy even if you didn't get it trapped in the right department. >> Okay, now the caller who asked that question had a follow-up one but that went off my script. Oh, here it is. Okay, so here's a follow-up question to that. And and I have strong opinions on this, but I'll let Susan answer this as well. So it's a follow-up from Nicole, and she says, synthetic photosynthesis, you support GMO, which is man's manipulation of natural organisms to optimize favorable features. So the, the short answer is yes. So as I've said before on this class, and I will say again in this office hour, every single industrial organism on this planet has had its genome modified, okay? That is true of corn, wheat, soy beans, rice cows, chickens, pigs, you name it. Every single one of those organisms, we have manipulated those genomes. We have selected them to have traits that are favorable to us. That, that is what allows 7 billion people to be alive on this planet. I don't, I don't have visuals that I can show you, but if you look up teosinte, which is the precursor of corn. And then you look what an ear of corn looks like today, you can see how we have genetically modified that organism over about 7,000, over the last 7,000 years, okay? So it, it's, it's not a matter of whether you know, I, I support it or not. That's what we have done as a society, that's what allows us to have 7 billion people on the planet. Now, when we talk about genetic engineering strategies, we are still modifying genomes, but we're doing it in a more precise fashion. So I think what the real question here is asking is, do I support genetic engineering technologies to take natural organism and optimize them for fa, favorable features. Then the answer is yes. That's what biotechnology is, that's what agriculture is, that's what animal husbandry is. We, we have, you know, nat, corn is not a natural organism, wheat is not a natural organism. Cows and chickens and pigs are no longer natural organisms. We have, we have turned them into something that is more productive for us. Susan? >> Yeah, I guess the only thing I'll add is that it's really, the difference is knowledge. So if you go back to, so we're really talking about domestication. And if you go back you know, decades and centuries, the only way to domesticate was to breed, to cross two things, whether they were just varieties of the same organism, or even trying to make some kind of a hybrid. And that's been done historically. And then the other approach which has been somewhat more recent but still going back decades, is to bombard organisms with mutagens, so that you get new mutations, and then breeding, breeding. And that was all because we were groping, we the cosmic we of scientists who've been trying to improve organisms ha, were groping in the dark and not knowing what it is they should fix. Well, the difference is now sometimes we know what we can fix, and so should we in fact, you know,. Why would it be of benefit to take the entire genome of two organisms and try to mush together? You know, thousands or tens of thousands of genes, to get some improvement, when there's one, and you know which one it is. I, I don't see that there's anything fundamentally more moral about mashing around thousands of genes instead of one gene. >> But, it's a huge debate, and we understand that, and we acknowledge it. And, and you know, people ask me all the time, oh, do you eat organic food? I do. specifically, no. but, I'm perfectly happy with, with, you know, organic farming processes. I, I think we need to learn not to recycle things much better. but, I certainly don't shy away from GM food. Right? And, by the way, I know I've said this before. A 100% of French cheese is GM. 100%. You guys can go look it up. The reason for that is because the enzymes they use to process cheese all come from recombinant bacteria. And we'll talk about that another day. Okay. so, let's see. Here's another one that we are going to answer now. Completely different topic. It says, what if we use coal through the Fischer-Tropch process? So, the Fischer-Tropch process is where you are going to, you know, take coal and high temperature and pressure. You're going to take it down to what's called sin gas, carbon monoxide. And, hydrogen and then recombine those into mixed alcohols and then from those you can get a fuel. So, we're going to take the Fischer-Tropsch process and then recycle it's CO2 using the Craig Venture technology that turns CO2 into transportation fuel. so, I'm not 100% certain what great inventor's technology that turns CO2 into transportation fuel, but if it's fixing it through photosynthesis in algae or in bacteria or something else then that's great. I mean if, if you can take CO2 and you can sequester it in some way. Then, I think what's called coal to liquid, you know, which is the process your talking about then that has some future. Unfortunately, we do write, you know. Now today, take coal and turn it into liquid transportation fuels and that is the single largest process by which you can get a transportation fuel and emit the most CO2. Nothing else even comes close to that, all right. Right now, coal to liquid technology is not very robust in terms of the energy return on investment. So, it's really poor. And then it puts out a huge amount of CO2. So, there was a big campaign in this country in the, in the, in the U.S. in 2008 about this clean coal technology. And, in, and in fact, the coal industry started an entire campaign. Where they hired guys to go out and ask every candidate who was running. What do you think about clean coal technology? Or, are you in support of clean coal technology? And, and the idea behind it is great, right? The idea behind it is that, we have a lot of coal on this planet. Couple hundred years worth of energy left in that you know, at today's rate that we're burning it. Wouldn't that be great if we could get the energy out of that and capture the CO2, and get rid of all of the other heavy metals and the rest of the stuff that comes out of it. So, that, that's a great idea. There are, many companies and lots of research scientists that are working on that. But, you know, I want to be real clear on this, there is zero technology available today that allows us to sequester CO2 or capture many of the heavy metals from coal. Coal is the number one energy source for electricity worldwide. It is the number one greenhouse gas emitting source on the planet. It is also the reason that we have mercury on all of our tuna and the rest of the fish in the ocean. But, that mercury does not naturally occur in the ocean. It gets there because we burn coal in powerplants and the mercury goes up into the atmosphere, comes back down in rain, gets into the food chain and ends up in the tuna. So, great idea, but a long way off from being, you know, anything like economically or environmentally ready to be deployed. Susan, any comments? >> Nope. >> You're going to let that one go? >> Got it. >> Okay. Let's see. We already answered that one. okay, here's a Chris Burzink fingers etc. Okay. I'm not sure what the question is there, but it's okay. You know what? >> You can talk about it. >> We'll, we'll, we'll answer this one, anyway. [LAUGH] So, here's one from Nicholas. Nicholas, you're sending lots of comments today, I like that. And, it says, CRISPR zinc fingers, etcetera. So, that's not really a question, but it, it's, it's the name of a couple of different things that we use in genomic technologies. And, maybe that's why, yhy Nicholas threw that up there. That's what he was talking about, when he was talking about Genome Technology. So, crispers and zinc fingers are two different proteins. Crispers come out of bacteria and that, that, that is a system. It takes more than just you know the. It's called a cast nine enzyme or something. But, it, but it take several different components. And, what it does is it, it allows you to specifically identify a gene in a genome, in a very complex genome and then go in and cut that gene. so, you actually go in and clip it. So, you can use that either to you know, inactivate any gene in the genome you want. Or, if you do this under the right conditions and very cleverly, you can actually do homologous recombination and replace that gene, with one of your choice. So, very precise, molecular engineering tool, it's now used very widely, in, in every system. We are desperately trying to get it to go in in green algae. Because it's a super powerful technology. It's powerful for a couple of reasons. One is, when you can do precise genome editing like that and go out and knock out and individual gene. Then you can ask really fundamental questions about the biology of the organism. So, you can go and delete one gene that maybe is in the enzymatic pathway to make one specific kind of fatty acid. And then, ask, hey, if I delete that guy, what happens to fatty acid accumulation? Do other ones accumulate? You know, at a higher level, whatever. so, so, a super powerful technology, working in many many different systems. And, we hope to get it going in LG soon. Zinc fingers are slightly different. Zinc fingers are a set of proteins that bind DNA and you can take these to make synthetic promoters synthetic transcription factors, rather. And again, powerful genomic editing technology. I don't, I don't know if anybody's used zinc fingers in, in algae yet to get gene activation. But, it works in a bunch of other systems, and I, I think there are things that we use. Did you guys ever use those in cyanos? >> We don't need to. [LAUGH] So, we, we have the cyanobacteria we work with, we work with because they have very good genetics, and we just have easier ways that answer, performing the same thing. >> Okay, here's, so Bill. Bill Kearney's sending you lots of questions here today, which is fine. We're going to see if we're going to. Let's see which ones have been voted up here a little higher. [NOISE] 'Kay. We'll try this one right here. And, this one says, many reports were released outlining how, due to the increased price of corn, farmers in the tropical regions were cutting rainforest to plant more fields. What must be done so farmers. Don't do one green thing, but in turn increase the carbon footprint. Yeah, so, where this really became an issue was when the European Union elected to have a, a requirement of 20% biodiesel. Europe uses a lot more diesel in their cars and less gasoline. And, in the U.S. we use more gasoline and less deal diesel. But, but in, but in Europe, they said we need 20% renewable. And so, one of the best or cheapest forms at least of renewable diesel comes from palm, palm oil. And, that grows in a very small band, right around the equator. So, only in the tropics. And so, I think what the question is asking is, you know, okay, it's a good idea to have renewable diesel, so the Europeans passed that. But then, what happened is, people went down and started cutting down the rain forest. Especially in Sumatra, one of the places that were really hit hard by this in order to plant oil palms. So that they could get you know, renewable diesel out of that and ship it to Europe. And, when you do the life cycle analysis of this and look at the carbon footprint, it's much worse to cut rainforest down and plant palms, to get the oil out of them, than it is just to go out and, and pull fossil fuel out of the ground. To a degree, corn has done the same thing. So, that by the way in, in a life cycle assessment is called indirect land use. That means when you take 40% of the corn crop in the United States and dedicate that to corn ethanol. And then, what happens now is since that 40% of the crop is going to corn ethanol, that's not available to feed cows and chickens and pig, which is the traditional use of corn. Then, somebody someplace else in another part of the world is simply going to go plant more corn because the farmers who are raising pigs and chickens still need to buy it from somebody. And so, when we turn 40% of our corn crop into ethanol for gasoline, then farmers down in Brazil or Argentina or other places where you can plant corn will go down and cut down grasslands. They don't cut down tropical forests, because that's not where corn grows. It grows in the grasslands, but they'll cut down the grasslands, the native grasses and plant corn in its place. So, this is a significant problem. We now recognize it in California, in direct land use has to be taken into consideration when you do a life cycle assessment. So, in California in order to count as a low carbon fuel, you need at least a 40% reduction in your CO2 output. And, that has to include a calculation for indirect land use. So, because of that calculation, corn ethanol does not count as a low carbon fuel in the United States, nor would diesel made from palm oil, right, because you have to gut the rain forest to do it. Susan. >> In terms of what has to be done. We have to get leaders who can have a 50 to 100 year time horizon on making decisions instead of a 6 months to 18 months time horizon. It has to be more than what's going to get me elected in the next election. >> Yep. >> And, I think that there are, I mean, sometimes there are unintensive, unintended consequences that really can't be foreseen. That sometimes there are experts, economists and and, and geologists and agriculturists who can foresee some of these down the road problems. Maybe, not very far down the road even. But sometimes the knowledge is there and that's not what the decisions are based on. >> Yep. Okay. Well, I'm sorry. Then, we have to end on that sad note of our irresponsible politicians in the United States, but I'm sure nobody's shocked by that. >> It's not all of the United States. >> Yes, I know it's world wide, so I just want to say keep up the good work on the forums. You guys are sending in lot's of interesting questions. And, the comments are going really well. We read those all the time. And, and I want to give a shout out to, let's see. Notable posters are Robin Craig and Martin Crowl. You know, good job you guys. Thanks, thanks for, you know, continuing to add to this. Sorry I didn't get to all the questions today. Uh,you know, feel free to you know, email me if you have some pressing issue that you just have to have the answer. And, if I don't know it, I'll go and try find somebody who does. Again, thanks very much. And, I will see you all next week. >> Bye.
