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News

Leaf-cutter ants, a model potential for biofuel production


 

In recent years, researches have been looking for alternative energy sources that can replace fossil fuels. One of them is biofuel, a fuel produced from living organisms. A recent study, conducted by University of Wisconsin-Madison on the communities of leaf-cutter ants, has led to a discovery of potential model for better biofuel production.

Researches at University of Wisconsin-Madison have discovered a potential model for biofuel production by exploiting novel catabolic enzymes produced by communities of fungi and bacteria in the colonies of leaf-cutter ants. Frank Aylward, a lead researcher, tries to identify these new enzymes and to understand the relationships between fungi and bacteria with the help of U.S. Department of Energy Joint Genome Institute (JGI) and Roche Applied Science’s 10 Gigabase Grant Program. By understanding the mechanisms of this community, researchers are hoping to create similar methods for biofuel production using other cellulosic materials, such as corn stalks and grasses.

To create biofuels, cellulosic materials, brought by leaf-cutter ants, are degraded into sugar subunits.by fungi. The degradation process is also facilitated by bacteria, whose roles are still poorly known. The sugars are then converted into ethanol (biofuel) through fermentation. The research basically focuses on two key points; identifying new degrading enzymes by using genome sequencing and understanding the roles of bacteria in fungus’ productivity. The results of enzyme identifications may have a potential to create more effective degrading enzymes through biotechnology, whereas understanding the role of bacteria may enhance the productivity of fungi.

The difficulty of this research, however, lies upon the replication of leaf-cutter ants’ communities in nature to laboratory environment or biofuel refinery, which may not be potentially realized in industrialized setting. The only method that can be used for now is to extract the synthesis degrading enzymes and combine these enzymes with other known enzymes to test for its efficacy in degrading cellulosic materials. However, the it is really costly and time consuming. To further investigate, researches on other fungal cultivating insects, such as termites and beetles, should be conducted to understand the complexity of biomass degradation into biofuels.