Fungus Genome: Key to Clean Fuels?

May 9, 2008 -- By decoding the genome of a green fungus with a hunger for fibrous plants, scientists hope to boost the supply of cellulose-based ethanol, leaving more food for consumption and driving down transportation costs.

"People have had the idea for many years to use the inedible portion of food and turn it into fuel," said Diego Martinez, a scientist at Los Alamos National Laboratory and study author.

"Right now it's too pricey," he explained. "We want to bring down that cost."

The high cost of cellulose-based ethanol comes from the expensive enzymes, derived from the fungus Tricoderma reesei, which are used to break down trees, corn stalks, paper, and other wood or pulp-based items.

For years, scientists have tried to economically produce enough enzymes to break cellulose down into simple sugars that can then be fermented into ethanol, but to no avail.

Having the genome of T. reesei "gives you a tool kit with all the tools, where before you were trying to blindly match things up," said Jason Stajich, a researcher at the University of California, Berkeley, and co-author of the blog fungalgenomes.org. Stajich was not involved in the new study.

Now that scientists have all the tools, it will be "easier to tinker with the genetic machinery to make it efficiently produce more enzymes to bring down the cost," said Martinez.