Craig Venter and Steve Coll on "the Need to Roll the Dice" on Future Energy Sources

[ckwrich1]

Finally some open honesty on the topic of Algae for Bio Crude for fuel. John Benemann’s observations some several years ago were insightful.

[MrJwm77]

Stormwern: Maybe my thinking is naive, but I figure there are no extremely fatty algae cells in nature because it is not an advantageous quality. If any of the big fats were released into the wild, they probably wouldn't make it very far. If anything, it seems the kill switches would be most useful for protecting intellectual property.

[Stormwern]

Interesting stuff, but so dangerous, any kill switch could go away with mutations.

[KevinBjorke]

@Stormwern depends on the kill-switch. Most bio kill-switch mechanisms are active -- not passive, like an electrical "e-stop." A kill-switch sequence might include a dependence on a specific protein that's plentiful in the lab dish but not outside the lab dish. Removing *either* the protein or the kill-switch causes the cell to die.

[Stormwern]

@KevinBjorke Sounds like you know more about genetics than me, but it's hard for me to imagine there couldn't be a mutation that allows them to survive off a different protein. How many bacteria does it take to make 10 billion tonnes of fuel per year..