At Penn State, seeking energy locked in wood

The Philadelphia Inquirer
Posted on Mon, Feb. 23, 2009
By Tom Avril
Inquirer Staff Writer
STATE COLLEGE, Pa. - Deftly using a pair of tweezers, Scott Geib pulls apart the insides of a yellowish, wormlike critter - the larva of a tree-devouring pest called the Asian long-horned beetle. Something in the insect's gut allows it to make short work of wood, but what?
In a greenhouse several hundred yards away, some of Geib's Pennsylvania State University colleagues are growing rows and rows of designer poplar trees. The slender plants have been genetically tweaked so that their woody fabric has a weak link, allowing better access to the energy-rich sugars inside.

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