Microbial investment

The search for greener alternatives to fossil fuels has led to a major investment in a microbe that converts plant matter into ethanol.

Dubbed the “Q microbe,” the bacterium has been the focus of University of Massachusetts Amherst microbiologist Susan Leschine’s work for the past decade. Now it’s taking centre stage at SunEthanol, a new Amherst, Massachusetts-based biofuels technology company.

Noted for its appetite for all things cellulose - including switchgrass, wood pulp and corn plant waste - the bacterium is highly efficient at converting biomass to ethanol. And it does so in a carbon-neutral process that doesn’t require the additional enzyme treatments usually accompanying bioethanol production.

SunEthanol recently received millions of dollars in funding from several venture capital funds and other investors, including VeraSun Energy, one of the US’s largest producers of renewable fuel.

The Q microbe is actually a strain of the soil-dwelling bacterium Clostridium phytofermentans, which was isolated from forest soil collected near the Quabbin Reservoir in central Massachusetts by Thomas Warnick, a member of Leschine’s lab. The bacterium had never been described before by science and Clostridium phytofermentans was recognised in 2002 as a novel organism.