
Efficient solar-to-fuels production from a hybrid microbial–water-splitting catalyst system
Abstract excerpt: “…we report the development of a scalable, integrated bioelectrochemical system in which the bacterium Ralstonia eutropha is used to efficiently convert CO2, along with H2 and O2 produced from water splitting, into biomass and fusel alcohols.”
Reported as: New altered bacteria can convert sunlight into liquid fuel
News article excerpt 1) “This is just what an actual leaf does, except Nocera’s cheap little invention can do it 10 times faster.”
See also: O2 and CO2 Reactions
Excerpt: 6 CO2 + 6 H2O —-> C6H12O6 + 6 O2
You will recognize that this is the back reaction of the combustion of a carbohydrate, which is highly favored. Plants carry out the forward reaction getting the energy from sunlight. You really cannot beat these energetics.
News article excerpt 2) “There have been 2.6 billion years of evolution, and Pam [Silver, from Harvard] and I working together a year and a half have already achieved the efficiency of photosynthesis.”
My comment: Apparently, cosmic rays perturb these energetics. However, theoretical physicists and evolutionary theorists seem to believe that perturbed energetics link thermodynamic cycles of protein biosynthesis and degradation in bacteria to the evolution of increasing organismal complexity during 2.6 billion years of evolution.
See for comparison: Scientists discover organism that hasn’t evolved in more than 2 billion years
Summary: “The greatest absence of evolution ever reported has been discovered by an international group of scientists: a type of deep-sea microorganism that appears not to have evolved over more than 2 billion years. But the researchers say that the organisms’ lack of evolution actually supports Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution.”
My comment: Lack of evolution across billions of years (2/2/15) is compared to evolution across billions of years (2/9/15). The claims from both representations of biologically-based cause and effect appear within the same week.
It seems likely that only futile attempts can be made to explain how ecological variation is epigenetically linked to ecological adaptations in species from microbes. Reports of evolution seem to occur outside the biophysically constrained chemistry of protein folding that links light-induced amino acid substitutions to cell type differentiation in all cells of all individuals of all species via conserved molecular mechanisms.
An accurate representation of how biological energy from the sun links the microRNA/messenger RNA balance from RNA-Mediated Thermoregulation of Iron-Acquisition Genes in Shigella dysenteriae and Pathogenic Escherichia coli to nutrient-dependent metabolic networks and genetic networks in other species is not likely to make sense to anyone who does not realize how glucose is transported via red blood cells.
Red blood cells are iron-containing liquid fuel. The iron is found in hemoglobin. “…the so-called alpha chains of hemoglobin have identical sequences of amino acids in man and the chimpanzee, but they differ in a single amino acid (out of 141) in the gorilla.” — Dobzhansky (1973) Nothing in Biology Makes Any Sense Except in the Light of Evolution
Nutrient-dependent pheromone-controlled reproduction in species from microbes to man, links light-induced amino acid substitutions in plants, algae, and sea slugs to cell type differentiation in all cells of all individuals of all species without the pseudoscientific nonsense about billions of years of evolution. It also eliminates the ridiculous theory that dinosaurs evolved into birds across 66 million years when coelacanths (fossil fish) did not change.