Plant Enzyme Can Convert Carbon Monoxide Into Propane, Paving the Way for Exhaust-Powered Cars

This is an interesting discovery. I'm curious to see if anything comes of it. Oh, by the way, the image you have attached is of poke berries, not soy beans...not that it really matters.

That's not a picture of a soybean plant.

Beat you to it GregNJ. ;-)

A balanced combustion reaction in a car does not product carbon monoxide. This is what Catalytic converters were for. They are filled with Platinum Dioxide and would react with CO to product Platinum carbonate and O2.

Manannan suggests Platinum is no longer a catalyst but directly part of the reaction? Not!

I'm no chemist but 2(CO) + O2 --Pt--> 2(CO2)
NOT this : 2(CO) + Pt ---> PtC2 + O2

@OddNotion
Maybe somebody made Poke Berries out of soy products =)

@OddNotion - Unfortunately, my ADD only allows me to read the first sentence. ;)

The article referred in the link does an excellent job of explaining exactly how they get this organism to produce propane.

Interesting discovery...!

The plant pictured above this article is Phytolacca americana, or poke sallet. Very poor people in the southern states used to eat it, but don't much now as it is toxic if you don't prepare it correctly. I let poke grow in my garden because I enjoy the way it looks, and because it always makes older people in my family happy to see the plant. Birds also enjoy the berries. Not sure why someone mistook this for soybean.

"Poke Sallet Annie, gators got your granny..."
I couldn't believe it when I saw this picture. I have been trying to identify these monsters with their inky berries for a long time. Someone once told me it was ginseng. I have a wildflower guide, I couldn't find it in there recently. So when I saw this and saw it was soybeans, well...I figured, "Wow! Purple Tofu." So I am glad the personage here pointed out what it really is. I have only heard of it through the quoted Joe South song from the 60s. And I thought it was 'poke salad', so thank you. Now I can read about it. although, if it ate carbon monoxide, I wouldn't mind the berry/ruined pants connection, from a surveyors point of view.

You don't get something for nothing. Where does the energy come from to join the molecules together? You can't just bond CO and get propane without energy coming from somewhere.

I love this site and magazine but they sometimes ignore the fine print in the articles. This is a great breakthrough but as the comment above me suggests, you don't get something for nothing and don't expect this to solve the energy crisis. The article mentions that the enzyme requires the hydrolysis of ATP to work, so an energy source is still required.
This discovery would still have many uses, such as converting energy from renewable sources into easily transported chemical sources of energy at remote locations. It could also produce building blocks for long hydrocarbon chains required to make plastics among other things.

umm those aren't soybeans they're unripe pokeberries