A common bacterium that lives in the human gut and can sometimes cause nasty stomach upsets can be used for good, scientists from the University of British Columbia have discovered. In what may well be a first for the solar industry, they genetically engineered a culture of E. coli to make the bacteria produce greater amounts of sun-soaking dye lycopene (the red pigment in tomatoes) and then watched that lycopene degrade and produce an electric current. Now, from one perspective this is the latest demonstration of the vast range of good uses that bacteria could be put to. From another, it is a cheaper alternative to other ways of harvesting sunlight using bacteria, which basically come down to extracting their sun-soaking pigments. It sounds kind of cruel if you’re not a bacteria hater: the UBC researchers first genetically modified the microorganisms, then they noticed the pigment degrading, which means […]