It could be biologists – not engineers – that have solved the aviation industry’s multi-billion-dollar problem of how to reach net zero emissions. Recent advances in synthetic biology claim to have produced a genetically modified soil bacteria that can produce a fuel even more energy dense that fuels available on the market today. Published in the journal Joule, academics from the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, California, have developed a way to produce cyclopropane (CP) rings using bacteria, producing one of the most energy-dense hydrocarbon structures known. Unlike normal hydrocarbons, where carbon atoms bond with up to four other atoms in a tetrahedral – often hydrogen – CP rings are only composed of three carbon atoms. The acute angles between the…