Hydrogen biofuel tagged posts

This is an artist’s rendering of P22-Hyd, a new biomaterial created by encapsulating a hydrogen-producing enzyme within a virus shell. Credit: Indiana University

Combining bacterial genes, virus shell creates a highly efficient, renewable material used in generating power from water. A modified enzyme that gains strength from being protected within the protein shell, “capsid” – of a bacterial virus, this new material is 150X more efficient than the unaltered form of the enzyme.

“Essentially, we’ve taken a virus’s ability to self-assemble myriad genetic building blocks and incorporated a very fragile and sensitive enzyme with the remarkable property of taking in protons and spitting out hydrogen gas,” said Prof. Trevor Douglas...