GCCGenetic engineering has always held the keys to a robust bioenergy response to possible fuel shortages. One of the companies best personifying the "can do" approach to advanced biofuels, is Chromatin, Inc. Chromatin specialises in the production of artificial "mini-chromosomes", or gene stacks, that are designed to be inserted into a plant's genetic apparatus, to harness the plant's natural dynamics for the purposes of making a higher yield of fuels. Chromatin aims to use this technology with sorghum -- a hardy plant capable of producing grain, sugar, or biomass.

...sorghum holds additional advantages as a preferred biomass source for sustainable bioenergy production the company points out:

It is capable of growing across a wide geographic area within the US, offering a broad opportunity as a multi-regional, locally-available dedicated energy crop;


Sorghum thrives on marginal lands, is water and nutrient efficient and provides a low overall environmental footprint; and


Sorghum does not directly compete as a domestic food resource.


Sorghum is ideally suited as the energy crop for the future. Sorghum is adapted to 80% of the world's agricultural land, is very drought tolerant, is extremely efficient on less than optimum soils, and has a very favorable carbon footprint compared to other major grain crops. By joining forces with Chromatin, we will speed the development and distribution of advanced sorghum bioenergy feedstocks worldwide, while continuing to support our existing customers. This is truly a step forward for sorghum.

—Larry McDowell, SPI’s President, and Chromatin's Director of Seed Operations

Chromatin will be further building and commercializing its sorghum product portfolio over the near term. Using a phased approach as a platform for improving sorghum over time, the company will use technologies such as compositional screening and analysis, marker assisted breeding and gene stacking to deploy proprietary feedstocks near term and ultimately to optimize sorghum for specific bioprocessors’ needs. _GCC

Other researchers will turn their genetic expertise to transforming sugar cane, tobacco, maize, and other plants to produce higher yields of fuels. Yet other researchers are hard at work producing high yield algae, cyanobacteria, and other microbes for biofuels, chemicals, and plastics. Even more researchers will turn to the transformation of bioenergy crops and microbes for arid and saltwater environments.

Watson and Crick started an avalanche of human ingenuity, back in the early 1950s. That is as it should be.

In fact, most of humanity's resources should be devoted toward promoting greater human ingenuity in solving problems -- rather than in promoting government graft and neo-fascist corporatist greed, as we see in Obama - Pelosi and other modern national governments far too often.