SOUTH SAN FRANCISCO, California — Replacements for the world's scarce fossil fuels are coming from some of the most unexpected places: the cornfield, the McDonald's discarded-cooking-oil bin...and now, the excrement of bacteria. Yes, biotech company LS9 has figured out a way to breed bacteria that excrete diesel fuel, and is on its way to breeding enough of them to produce fuel in commercially useful quantities.

The brilliance of the company's product is its simplicity. LS9 has created synthetic 'industrial microbes' in its labs that efficiently digest sugar in food and poop it out as hydrocarbon-based 'petroleum replacement products.' The company has even figured out how to genetically control what kind of fuel the bacteria create so they can make not just diesel but a variety of industrial fuels and chemicals. LS9 calls its product DesignerBiofuels and says its bacteria's handiwork can be 'essentially indistinguishable' from gasoline, diesel, even jet fuel. The result of the bacteria's work is fuel that can either be used directly in a vehicle or go to a refinery for further preparation.

LS9 says the DesignerBiofuels are nearly carbon-neutral, meaning about the same amount of carbon dioxide is generated by the combustion of fuels as is consumed by the plant-based foods eaten by the bacteria. The company suggests that its bacteria's efficient use of biomass or sugar cane addresses the food-versus-fuel issue beginning to be worrisome in other alternative-fuel scenarios such as ethanol.

LS9 says it is 'rapidly commercializing and scaling up' production — including building a pilot facility that will eventually let the company produce the fuel by the barrelful. The target is to have fuel available commercially 'within a few years.'