Probably nothing wrong with tweaking bacteria genes into producing petroleum products. It’s not like a release of these solar-converting bacteria spread across the world’s oceans would be a problem (I mean look at how well the Valdez spill cleaned up).

At the very least, it looks like they require a great deal of carbon input (CO2) which makes me wonder how much energy we’d have to put into the system to generate CO2 which ends up as oil. But if the little buggers are using solar to re-bond petroleum chains then it might be semi-efficient.

Could all be talk and PR for VCs, but Venter does have quite the track record. (From EcoGeek)  Read more