 Humans are increasingly looking to find alternatives to fossil fuels as sources of energy and feed stocks for chemical production. To that end, some scientists have created artificial photosynthetic systems to generate renewable energy and simple organic chemicals using sunlight. The researchers are presenting their work at the 254th National Meeting and Exposition of the American Chemical Society. Kelsey Sakamoto, working in Paidong Yang's lab at the University of California Berkeley focuses on harnessing inorganic semiconductors that can capture sunlight to organisms such as bacteria that can then use the energy to produce useful chemicals from carbon dioxide and water. They're using efficient light absorbers like cadmium sulfide semiconductors to try to supercharge bacteria by covering their bodies with semiconductor nanocrystals. Sakamoto worked with a naturally occurring non-photosynthetic bacteria, Mirella thermoacetica, which produces acetic acid from carbon dioxide as part of its normal respiration. Acetic acid is a versatile chemical that can be readily upgraded to a number of fuels, polymers, pharmaceuticals, and commodity chemicals through complementary genetically engineered bacteria. When Sakamoto fed cadmium and the amino acid cysteine to the bacteria, they synthesized cadmium sulfide nanoparticles, which function as solar panels, on their surfaces. The hybrid organism, M-thermoacetica-CDS, produces acetic acid from CO2, water, and light. The bacteria operate at an efficiency of more than 80%, and the process is self-replicating and self-regenerating, making this a zero-waste technology. Once covered in the tiny solar panels, the bacteria can synthesize food, fuels, and plastics all using solar energy. The system still requires some tweaking, and the researchers are looking for more benign light absorbers than cadmium sulfide, but the hope is these cyborg bacteria can harness the power of the sun to provide needed chemicals in the future. Headline Science is a production of the American Chemical Society. For more of the latest chemistry headlines, make sure to subscribe.