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Behold, the gribble - a tiny louse-like crustacean that's been devouring wooden ships and piers since time immemorial and that now may hold a key to lowering the cost and increasing the ease of turning wood waste into bio-ethanol to help run our cars and trucks.


Seems that the four-spotted gribble, or limnoria quadripunctata, has a gut full of enzymes that break down wood fibers, turning them to sugars that keep Mr. Gribble going but also could be processed into ethanol (a form of wood alcohol) fuel.


This is potentially important because the cellulosic ethanol industry (cellulosic because it comes from cellulose, which comes from woody plant material) needs a source of cheap but effective cellulose-digesting enzymes to help bring down the cost of turning the stuff into fuel.


Knowledge of the amazing cellulose digesting enzymes in gribbles' digestive tracts - while new to we here at Green Car Advisor -apparently has been kicking around for a while but was most recently put under the microscope - literally - by researchers at the BBSCR Sustainable Bioenergy Center at the universities of York and Portsmouth in the U.K.


It was reported just this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, although we first saw it in an on-line Australian info-compiler called Gizmag.com.


The researchers think the goo in the gribbles' guts might be adaptable to commercial biofuel applications, replacing the very expensive laboratory-engineered enzymes on which cellulosic ethanol producers now rely.


Go gribbles, go!

Tags: Biofuels, Ethanol, Biofuels, Cellulosic Ethanol, Gribbles

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Gribbles, With Guts Full of Cellulose-Digesting Enzymes, May Be Big in Biofuels was originally published by Green Car Advisor. Read the full story by clicking here.