About This Lesson
While sources of biofuel currently exist, such as ethanol made from corn, Professor Steve Hutcheson at the University of Maryland is developing a new approach to producing biofuels from cellulosic biomass, using a bacterium discovered in the Chesapeake Bay.
In this lesson students will do the following: understand how the market plays a role in a commodity being produced, deconstruct a simple technology and detail the materials that go into it, investigate how microbes can be manipulated to create valuable products, brainstorm a list of some of the constraints within which bioengineers have to work with in order to manipulate microbes for human use, work within constraints to design an optimum growth chamber for microbes, and discuss the tools that support growth and the science knowledge, laboratory technical abilities, and other microbiological expertise they think individuals might need to work in a microbiology lab.
“Science of Innovation” is produced in partnership with the National Science Foundation and the United States Patent and Trademark Office.
