Markus Ribbe, a scientist at the University of California-Irvine, says in a new paper that the enzyme could be further tweaked to make longer carbon chains than those that make up propane.
The report "paints a more dire picture than probably many of us have realized," Odadele Ogunseitan, a professor of social ecology at UC Irvine, told TechNewsDaily.
The story of what Kenneth Pomeranz, a history professor at the University of California, Irvine, has called "the Great Divergence" between East and West began much earlier.