Insects’ Gut Microbes Hint at Biofuel Breakthrough
by Li Jiao (SciDev.net) Deep inside insects’ guts may lie the key to one of the biofuel industry’s great challenges: how to cost-effectively turn tough plant waste into profit-making fuel.
About 50 million tonnes of lignin are produced every year worldwide, mostly as waste after the sugar, or cellulose, in a plant has been converted into ethanol.
Finding a way to process this tough molecule could boost biofuel production and cut the greenhouse gases that are emitted when it is burned as waste.
Insects harbour natural catalysts that could be exploited to convert plant material into biofuels more efficiently, report scientists in a paper in PLoS Genetics this month (10 January). Herbivorous insects often rely on microbes in their guts using these molecules to digest plant materials such as cellulose and lignin.
By comparing the genomes of gut microbes from grasshoppers, termites and cutworm caterpillars, the scientists found that the diversity of gut microbes present and their ability to break down plant materials are linked to what the insects eat. These findings could be used to guide future searches for enzymes for use in the biofuel industry, they say.
… ( Joshua) Yuan’s (assistant professor in systems biology and bioenergy at Texas A&M University) laboratory has received a US$2.4 million grant from the US Department of Energy to try to use enzymes found in termite guts and microbes to design a way of turning lignin into biofuel. READ MORE Abstract
