Prize for "photosynthesis 2.0." Tobias Erb, managing director of Germany's Max Planck Institute for Terrestrial Microbiology, had his team awarded with an endowment of 1 million Euro for efforts to engineer new biocatalysts that are better at fixing carbon dioxide. The Max Planck researcher receives the award for the development of an artificial photosynthesis. Photosynthesis relies on enzymes that allow plants to use energy from the sun to convert carbon dioxide into oxygen and sugars. The success story of Tobias Erb's research team started with the meticulous selection and optimization of the best biological building blocks for the big challenge, namely, to use sunlight to capture CO2 more efficiently than plants have been doing for millions of years. The team of scientists want to improve on nature to create a more efficient way of removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. In the future, scientists hope that it will find its way into bioreactors in order to use CO2 sustainably as a valuable material or to even extract it from the surrounding atmosphere. The technology could eventually be used to make chemical building blocks for new kinds of fuel, drugs or even food. Click on the images below to learn more and here for the original press release of the Merck Future Insight Prize, responsible for the award.
