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By John O'Dell, Senior Editor


Okay, so what do your family car, a box of laundry detergent, the beans you're eating because you can't afford anything else in this economy and that Christmas tree you now have to get rid of have in common?


Well, if researchers at Pennsylvania State University are successful, the last three items could be combined to make fuel for the first.


A Penn State research team is genetically modifying woody plants for use in biofuels by adding a bean-based protein that makes them vulnerable to the enzymes used in laundry detergents.


Woody plants use a material called lignin to help form a tough outer layer that shields their soft cellulose insides from beetles and other pests. The lignin also gives the plants rigidity so they can grow upright.


But it also makes it hard to break them down and extract the cellulose for use in making cellulosic ethanol. That's the big reason we use easy-to-extract starches from corn for most ethanol production in the United States.


But the university says that two researchers, John Carlson and Ming Tien, have developed a way to introduce a protein that makes it easier to break down the lignin and extract the cellulose from woody plants and trees.


Right now, a lot of research is centered on using expensive, genetically engineered fungus and bacteria to do the work.


"There is lots of energy-rich cellulose locked away in wood," molecular geneticist Carlson said in an interview with the university newspaper.


"But separating this energy from the wood to make ethanol is a costly process requiring high amounts of heat and caustic chemicals. Moreover, fungal enzymes that attack lignin are not yet widely available, still in the development stage, and not very efficient in breaking up lignin."


Another approach is to reduce the amount of lignin in the plants, but that, scoffed biochemist Tien, is "like trying to engineer boneless chicken. It just doesn't make sense" because the plants would have no structure to keep them upright while growing.
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Tags: Alternative Fuels, Biofuels, Ethanol, Fuels & Technologies, Cellulosic Ethanol, Penn State, Pennsylvania State University

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Researchers Say Laundry Soap and Beans Could Hold Key to Cellulosic Ethnol was originally published by Green Car Advisor. Read the full story by clicking here.