User:Praut100/sandbox

Biofuels have been around ever since fire was invented. In ancient times, people used wood and manure as fuel. In later times, whale blubber and animal fat was used as biofuels. George Washington Carver, an African American scientist that worked with peanuts, discovered that you could make oil from peanuts. Some of the earliest cars used biofuels. All that ended when the crude oil was discovered, and biofuels were quickly replaced by gasoline because gasoline was extremely cheap. Now, gas and oil prices have gone up, scientists are looking for other ways to use fuels in cars, biofuels being one of them. The demand for gasoline has also gone up, especially in the two most populous countries in the world, China and India, and since gasoline is a nonrenewable source of fuel, it will run out soon.

Technology
There are many types of technology when dealing with Biofuels, and one of them is Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR). PCR is how scientists convert plant DNA to create fuel by copying the DNA millions of times.

Applications of the Technology
This genetic modification can be used to convert plant products into fuels like ethanol. What plant product is used in the process depends on what plant products are readily available. For example, in the United States, corn is abundantly grown, so it is used for producing ethanol by fermentation process with the addition of microorganisms such as yeast. PCR can be applied to the corn, genetically modifying the code of the DNA such that it will be turned into fuel. In other areas such as Brazil, sugar cane is a major crop, so it is used for making ethanol. In Canada, wheat is used.

Polymerase Chain Reaction
rDNA is what is used to change the DNA code. This can be done with the biotechology of Polymerase Chain Reaction in which a single or few copies of DNA are amplified generating billions of copies of DNA. The first step in PCR, called Denaturation, is when the DNA splits into two parts. Then, two primers (short pieces of single-stranded DNA that are complementary to the target sequence) bind with the DNA strands. The DNA Polymerase (a type of enzyme that synthesizes new strands of DNA complementary to the target sequence) create more DNA from the end of the primer. This process is repeated exponentially, resulting in billions of copies of the original DNA strand.

Advantages and Disadvantages
Advantages

•	Renewable: the crops can be grown repeatedly in a short amount of time.

•	Plants absorb carbon dioxide, so they will get rid of it, and they won’t release as much emissions.

•	Some plant products, such as algae, are cheap.

•	Biofuels are biodegradable.

Disadvantages

•	Processing plants into fuel consumes a lot of energy

•	Using corn to produce ethanol would mean less corn for human consumption as a source of food.

•	It will increase food prices.

•	The initial costs are very high.

My Opinion
I think that instead of using corn or any other food plant, we could just use algae. Using food plants would be a waste of food, especially with World Hunger going on. Since algae have no use for us, we can use it. The only negative part would be that the animals that eat or use algae would not have enough.

Regulations in Canada
In Canada, gasoline pools have to have on an average of at least 5% renewable fuels in it such as ethanol. Some places in Canada need to have different amounts of renewable content. Ontario requires 5%, while Manitoba requires 8.5% renewable content. The United States needs 9.21% of renewable content in fuel. Most gas stations in the United States, though, have 10% ethanol in their fuel.

Regulations for the environment in Canada control the impact of production of biofuels on the environment. For example, they require certificates of approval for discharge from biofuel production facilities in the air and water. The United States has similar regulations to protect their environment.

Original "Kudos"
I think that the original kudos for biofuel technology goes to James Watson and Francis Crick. They discovered the structure of DNA as a double helix, comprising of the base pairs of adenine (A), guanine (G), thymine (T), and cytosine (C). The detailed knowledge of the structure of the DNA allows scientists to modify the DNA of the plant cell that will produce the desired product, in this case, biofuels.