Gribbles — why these wood-feasting microbial Vikings might be energy stars

Gribbles and UK research

Back in January 2009, the Digest reported on UK’s biggest ever public investment in bioenergy research investment, a £27 million BBSRC Sustainable Bioenergy Centre that would ultimately provide funding for a project at the Centre for Novel Agricultural Products in the University of York’s Department of Biology. The York project, headed by Professor Simon McQueen-Mason, would work working with marine biologists at Portsmouth University to identify the enzymes in the gribble’s digestive tract that are the most efficient in breaking down wood.

Professor McQueen-Mason said: “Most animals that consume wood have digestive tracts packed with microbes that help to digest the cell wall polymers, but the gribble’s is sterile, so it must produce all the enzymes needed to break down the wood itself. We have done extensive DNA sequencing of the genes expressed in its gut, and we have detected cellulases never seen in animals before. We want to see if it’s possible to adapt the gribble digestive enzymes for industrial purposes.”

The project and its team popped up again this week,when the team at the University of York, University of Portsmouth and the U.S. National Renewable Energy Laboratory used advanced biochemical analysis and x-ray imaging to identify a new enzyme to convert woody biomass into liquid biofuel.

Dr John McGeehan, a structural biologist from the University of Portsmouth team, reports: “Once we succeeded in the tricky task of making crystals of the enzyme, we transported them to the Diamond Light Source, the UK’s national synchrotron science facility. Rather than magnify the enzyme with a lens as in a standard microscope, we fired an intense beam of X-rays at the crystals to generate a series of images that can be transformed into a 3D model. The Diamond synchrotron produced such good data that we could visualise the position of every single atom in the enzyme. Our US colleagues then used powerful supercomputers, called Kraken and Red Mesa, to model the enzyme in action. Together these results help to reveal how the cellulose chains are digested into glucose.”

In today’s Digest, we look into the gribble’s enzyme collection and what it has taught us, the technology used to explore it — and the implications for biofuels. Stopping where only x-ray microscopes can see — the whole story, for you, by clicking the page links below.