Understanding termite digestion could help biofuels

Ethanol Producer Magazine
By Purdue University
February 20, 2013

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Caltech professor sees green energy in termite guts

NASA: Global Climate Change: Energy Innovations
07.16.12 38
By Bob Silberg

Some primal termite knocked on wood
And tasted it, and found it good,
And that is why your Cousin May
Fell through the parlor floor today.
— Ogden Nash

If you’ve had to deal with termites in your house, you probably hate their guts. But not Jared Leadbetter. He loves termites, especially their guts!

"It turns out termites do something we'd like to do," said Dr. Leadbetter, a microbiologist at Caltech. That something is turning wood into biofuel, and doing it at a nice, civilized temperature, pressure and acidity level.

But what Leadbetter is after isn't really the biofuel termites use to power their daily functions, it's the substance they convert wood into on the way to forming what they ultimately use for energy -- an intermediate substance called "pyruvate."

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Termite guts could provide a way to produce biofuel from woody biomass

Gizmag.com
By Darren Quick
21:23 July 6, 2011

Ethanol is the most commonly used biofuel worldwide and is made by fermenting the sugar components of plant materials, usually sugar and starch crops such as sugar cane, corn and wheat. The difficulty in accessing the sugars contained in woody biomass, coupled with criticism that the use of food crops for biofuel production has a detrimental effect on the food supply has prompted research into biofuels that can be made from cellulosic biomass, such as trees and grasses. By looking at the digestive system of termites, researchers have now discovered a cocktail of enzymes that unlocks access to the sugars stored within the cells of woody biomass that could help make it a more viable source of biofuels, such as ethanol.

Until now, a rigid compound that makes up plant cell walls known as lignin has been one of the most significant barriers blocking the access to sugars contained in biomass and inhibiting their use in fuel production. Looking for a way to break down this barrier, Mike Scharf, the O. Wayne Rollins/Orkin Chair in Molecular Physiology and Urban Entomology at Purdue University, and his research partners turned to that scourge of the homeowner, the termite. Their study was the first to measure the sugar output from enzymes created by the termites themselves and the output from small protozoa called symbionts, which live in the termite guts and aid in digestion of woody material.

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Termite saliva may hold key to biofuels

Alligator.com
Posted: Wednesday, September 1, 2010 12:30 am Updated: 12:54 am, Wed Sep 1, 2010.
Meredith Rutland, Alligator Contributing Writer

A tiny bug could help solve one of the world’s biggest problems.

UF researchers have found two enzymes in termite saliva that help break down wood into sugars that the bioenergy industry can use to produce fuel for cars.

The paper was published on the Internet in “Insect Biochemistry and Molecular Biology” in August.

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UF research finds termite enzymes could be boon to cellulosic ethanol

University of Florida
Monday, August 23, 2010

GAINESVILLE, Fla. — Termite spit may soon help fill our gas tanks. University of Florida researchers have isolated two enzymes termites use to break up lignin, a tough plant material that is major problem during the production of cellulosic ethanol.

Cellulosic ethanol is a fuel produced from the inedible portions of plants, material often discarded as trash. The process often involves genetically engineered microbes such as bacteria or fungi to break down sugars found in the cell walls of the plants.

Before the microbes can do their work, however, they must first get past lignin, the compound largely responsible for making wood “woody” instead of soft.

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Termites studied in quest for green fuels

International Herald Tribune - The Global Edition of the New York Times
By Carolyn Y. Johnson The Boston Globe
Published: December 9, 2008

Researchers have scooped soil near a reservoir in Massachusetts, visited a Russian volcano, and scoured the bottom of the sea looking for microbes that hold the key to new biofuels. Now, they are investigating termites more deeply.

The otherwise dreaded insect is a model bug bioreactor, adept at the difficult task of breaking down wood and turning it into fuel.

Learning the secret of that skill could open the door to creating a new class of plant-based fuels to offset a reliance on petroleum products.

What scientists have learned so far, however, suggests that it will not be easy to duplicate nature.

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