Termites may hold the secret to the production of cellulosic ethanol
Termites ingest wood and convert it to fermentable sugars by exploiting the metabolic capabilities of microbes living symbiotically in their hind guts. The process is fast and efficient – typically achieving 95% conversion in 24 hours or less.
By mining the termite digestive system, Verenium expects to identify new, highly efficient enzymes that can potentially be adapted to process cellulosic biomass into sugars to make cellulosic ethanol at a large scale. This project is being carried out in partnership with the DOE’s Joint Genome Institute, InBio, and the California Institute of Technology.
