Marine pest study to boost biofuels
vrijdag, 12 maart 2010
A team of York-based researchers are studying a wood-eating marine pest that could bring about a biofuel breakthrough.
Gribble, creatures resembling pink woodlice, are capable of boring through the planks of ships and ruining wooden piers.
The Government-funded study by British researchers has found that the crustacean's wood-digesting talents are better than any other animal.
They found that gribble secrete an enzyme that helps it break down woody cellulose and turn it into energy-rich sugars.
This discovery, reported in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, could pave way towards the development of methods to convert wood and straw into liquid biofuel, the scientists said.
Professor Simon McQueen-Mason, who led the team said: "This may provide clues as to how this conversion could be performed in an industrial setting."
The animal's DNA sequences and the proteins they code for were identified through a genetic "fishing" technique. Scientists then used small end pieces of DNA known as "expressed sequence tags" to "hook out" genes by matching their component chemicals.
The team said: "This study has revealed a combination of glycosyl hydrolase genes in Limnoria that seem likely to endow it with greater autonomous facility for lignocellulose digestion than animals such as termites."
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