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Credit: Pusan National University
Rapid global urbanization has dramatically changed the face of our planet, polluting our atmosphere with greenhouse gases and causing global warming. It is the need of the hour to control our activities and find more sustainable alternatives to preserve what remains of our planet for the generations to come.
Carbon dioxide (CO
2) and carbon monoxide (CO) make up a large proportion of industrial flue gases. Recent research has shown that certain microorganisms are capable of metabolizing these gases into useful by-products. Thus, attempts are now being directed to using microbes to recycle these gases and convert them into useful chemicals in a process known as carbon capture and utilization (CCU). This is a step beyond the current widespread practice of carbon capture and storage (CCS). However, such CCU requires high energy input making the scaling up of this process difficult and expensive. How can this process then be optimized fo