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Game changer? Thought this is rather interesting

Boeing launches plan to turn tobacco into jet fuel

JOHANNESBURG: US aerospace giant Boeing said on Wednesday (Aug 6) it was working with South African Airways and a Dutch biofuel company to make jet fuel from tobacco seeds. The Dutch firm, SkyNRG, is boosting its production in South Africa of a hybrid, nicotine-free, tobacco crop called Solaris with "biofuel production expected ... in the next few years," the three companies said in a statement.

"Initially, oil from the plant's seeds will be converted into jet fuel. In coming years, Boeing expects emerging technologies to increase South Africa's aviation biofuel production from the rest of the plant," added the firms.

Aviation biofuel, made from renewable resources such as plants, can reduce carbon emissions by 50 to 80 per cent. Airlines have flown more than 1,500 flights powered by biofuel globally since it was approved in 2011.

Earlier this year, Boeing and research partners in the Middle East said they would start field trials after recording progress in making biofuel from desert plants fed with seawater.

Critics of biofuels say they are often manufactured from food crops, or compete for land and water with food crops, driving up food prices.

After smoking millions out and earning billions in the process, tobacco plants now show promise as been used as hosts (much safer than mammals) to grow antibodies.

Ebola Tobacco Drug Joins Duckweed in Plant War on Disease

On a small plot of land incongruously tucked amid a Kentucky industrial park sit five weather-beaten greenhouses. At the site, tobacco plants contain one of the most promising hopes for developing an effective treatment for the deadly Ebola virus.

The plants contain designer antibodies developed by San Diego-based Mapp Biopharmaceutical Inc. and are grown in Kentucky by a unit of Reynolds American Inc. Two stricken U.S. health workers received an experimental treatment containing the antibodies in Liberia last week. Since receiving doses of the drug, both patients’ conditions have improved.

Tobacco plant-derived medicines, which are also being developed by a company whose investors include Philip Morris International Inc., are part of a handful of cutting edge plant-based treatments that are in the works for everything from pandemic flu to rabies using plants such as lettuce, carrots and even duckweed. While the technique has existed for years, the treatments have only recently begun to reach the marketplace.

“Producing antibodies in plants is faster and less expensive than traditional manufacturing,” said Mary Kate Hart, an immunology researcher who did pioneering research on Ebola antibodies for the U.S. Army. She now is chief scientific officer for DynPort Vaccine Co.

Full link: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-08-06...apies.html