"Scientists have spent decades genetically modifying the bacterium Escherichia coli and other microbes to convert carbon dioxide into useful biological products. Most methods require additional carbon sources, however, adding to the cost. A new study overcomes this limitation by combining the photosynthetic finesse of a single-celled algae with the production capabilities of the bacteria E. coli.

The researchers report their results in the journal Metabolic Engineering.

This is not the first line of research to combine the special talents of photosynthetic organisms with other microbes. Previous studies have used cyanobacteria to take in CO2 and convert it into sugars that are then taken up by bacteria or yeast as a fuel and carbon source, said study lead Yong-Su Jin, a professor of food science and human nutrition and an affiliate of the Carl R. Woese Institute for Genomic Biology at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. The new method differs from those because the microalgae used, a mutant form of Chlamydomonas reinhardtii, takes in CO2 and excretes an organic acid, glycolate. E. coli readily consumes glycolate, but many other organisms cannot, whereas sugar has universal appeal and can feed a variety of microorganisms.

“Sometimes sugars are better for the production of certain products, and sometimes the organic acid is better,” Jin said. “But if we use glycolate instead of sugar, we have less chance of contamination with outside organisms.”"

"What expands when crushed, shrinks when heated, and could both change scientists’ fundamental understanding of materials and return old EV batteries to factory-fresh performance levels?

It’s not a riddle. It’s a slate of materials discovered by battery researchers from the University of Chicago Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering (UChicago PME) and visiting researchers at the University of California San Diego. As part of a long-term research collaboration, the team found negative-thermal expansion in metastable oxygen-redox active materials.

Simply put, they created materials that seemingly violate the laws of thermodynamics. When the materials are in their stable state, they react to heat, pressure or electricity like any other material. But in a metastable state the team discovered, their reactions are flipped.

“When you heat the materials, there’s no volume change. When heated, the material shrinks instead of expanding,” said UChicago PME Liew Family Professor in Molecular Engineering Shirley Meng, who also serves as the faculty director for Energy Technology Initiative of the newly launched Institute for Climate and Sustainable Growth. “We think we can tune these materials’ properties through redox chemistry. That can lead to very exciting applications.”

Their results were published in Nature.

“One of the goals is bringing these materials from research to industry, possibly developing new batteries with higher specific energy,” said co-first author Bao Qiu, a visiting scholar at UC San Diego from the Ningbo Institute of Materials Technology & Engineering (NIMTE)."