Scientists have figured out how to coax copious amounts of oil from duckweed, one of nature’s fastest-growing aquatic plants. Converting such plant oil into biodiesel for transportation and heating could be a big part of a more sustainable future.
For a new study in the Plant Biotechnology Journal, researchers genetically engineered duckweed plants to produce seven times more oil per acre than soybeans—currently the most commonly used biodiesel-producing plant. Study lead author John Shanklin, a biochemist at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Brookhaven National Laboratory, says further research could double the engineered duckweed’s oil output in the next few years.
According to Rebecca Roston, a biochemist at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln, who was not involved in the study, engineered green plants typically expend a lot of energy on oil production and thus stop growing. For the new study, Shanklin says, the researchers added an oil-producing gene that would be inactive at first, “turning it on like a light switch” by introducing a particular molecule only when the plant had finished growing.
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This process “worked fabulously well,” Roston says. “If it replicates in other species—and there’s no reason to think that it would not—this can solve one of our biggest issues.”
