Good news from Vienna - biofuel breakthrough

Trichoderma harzianum under
the microscope

When people think about fungi, they tend to regard them, first and foremost, as food. This is justified to some extent since historically fungi had little more to offer, except perhaps their beauty (or, indeed, ugliness) that was captured in art from medieval times to our days. This is a fascinating topic in itself, and I will surely return to it in another post, but today I wanted to write about the uses of fungi that have become available with modern technology.

In a previous post I looked at an article that presented fungi as an alternative to plastics, in the form of either biodegradable packaging or insulation material. It seems like there is currently a trend for engineers and scientists to explore the possibilities for non-food uses of fungi, as this week there was another news item, this time from the University of Vienna, reporting their success for synthesising biofuel from cellulose with the aid of a fungus of the Trichoderma genus.

Rather expensive biofuel

Biofuel can be easily produced from starchy plants, but this puts its production in competition with growing these plants for food. Cellulose, on the other hand, is present in common waste products like straw and sawdust and seems like a much better alternative. Unfortunately, breaking it down into small sugar molecules that can be subsequently turned into spirits requires special biologically active substances called enzymes. Microscopic Trichoderma fungi can produce these enzymes, but only when yet another special substance, inductor, is present. And here we have a problem: this inductor is 60 times more expensive than gold, which makes the resulting spirit cost about the same as 10-year-old Laphroaig. You wouldn't fuel your car with that if you have any financial sense.

Luckily, the researchers came across a strain of the fungus with a mutation that kept the switch for the enzyme in permanent "on" position, removing the need for the inductor. Such fungus could not have survived in the wild as it would be equivalent to a bird that keeps laying eggs non-stop. Yay, a domesticated fungus! Not a chanterelle sadly, but it's a good start. Subsequent genetic analysis isolated the responsible gene, which allowed to understand the mechanism for the molecular switch, and - voila!  - it seems like we are one step closer to averting the impending oil crisis, and that is very good news indeed.

Full text of the article can be found on the Science Daily web site.

Image credits:
Trichoderma mycelium
Laphroaig distillery