Belly of the Bug: Better Biofuels Through Termite Guts

Topic: Alt Fuel

Not satisfied with biofuels based on corn, cane, and chicken fat, metagenomicists are diving into the digestive tracts of termites in the hope of co-opting the microbial genes that let the house-chewing pests digest wood. MIT Technology Review quotes Jim Bristow of the Department of Energy's Joint Genome Institute:

Converting cellulose in trees and grasses into the simple sugars that can be fermented into ethanol is a very energy-intensive process. "If we had better enzymatic machinery to do that, we might be better able to make sugars into ethanol," Bristow says. "Termites are the world's best bioconverters."

Researchers at the institute, who "have just finished sequencing the microbial community living in the termite gut,"

have already identified a number of novel cellulases — the enzymes that break down cellulose into sugar — and are now looking at the guts of other insects that digest wood, such as an anaerobic population that eats poplar chips.

The expected end result: "a giant parts list that synthetic biologists can put together to make an ideal energy-producing organism."