Talk:Microbial Biofuels: Current Production and Future Prospects

Really great page! In general it flows really well and definitely makes sense. It is well edited and very thorough. This is a little nit-picky, but there was one sentence in your first section that sounded a little awkward to me: "Although many microbes have been used in ethanol production, the yeast species Saccharomyces cerevisiae is primarily used in industry, using starch and sugars from plants as the starting material for the process." Also, it may just be a stylistic thing, but I wasn't sure it was totally effective to identify so many research groups in your prose. It may be better to explain the research and have the citation at the end. But really those are very subtle points! I think it's a really, really good page.

Overall, I liked your use of data and your accompanying explanations in the text. I also thought the variety of topics you addressed was very effective. One thing you may want to consider talking about in your first section that explains the challenges of plant biofuels is water limitations. Fresh water is rapidly becoming scarce, and finding the requisite water to grow plants for biofuel production will be increasingly difficult. You could also touch on food security. When food grains were first allocated towards biofuels, the price of food increased enormously and threatened food supplies in developing countries. In the alternative feedstocks section, I was wondering where the fatty acids you discussed might come from in the real world. I liked that you included how glycerols can come from industrial waste byproducts, which seems like one of the most promising alternatives to fossils fuels because it doesn't incur all of the other environmental costs associated with growing copious amounts of plants for starting materials. I particularly liked the last section about efflux pumps. It's one of the concerns with biofuels that people rarely consider, so I'm very glad you chose to include it. Another thing you could consider is having a final conclusion paragraph at the end, in which you sum up the relative advantages and disadvantages and maybe present the most breakthrough/exciting technology to date.

Again, great job!! Very informative and interesting page.

(Hildy Joseph)