Biofuels researchers target termite gut enzymes as key to cellulosic breakthrough

The November issue of Nature profiles research on enzymes found in termite guts.

The research is conducted by the U.S. Department of Energy Joint Genome Institute (DOE JGI), the California Institute of Technology, biofuels firm Verenium Corporation, INBio, the National Biodiversity Institute of Costa Rica, and the IBM Thomas J. Watson Research Center.

Another consortium, at Emeryville in California, is also looking at termites for their ability to convert cellulose to sugars.

The Emeryville lab will fuse the research efforts of UC-Berkeley, UC- Davis, the Carnegie Institution for Science, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory , Lawrence Livermore and Sandia. The new venture will be known as the Energy Biosciences Institute.
The lab will be funded by the US Department of Energy, and also will benefit from a $500 million grant from BP. It will focus on several; areas of research besides termites, including feedstocks such as rice straw, switchgrass and Arabidopsis, a plant in the mustard family.

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