Termites may one day play a role in gassing up your car. The pests are so good at breaking down wood, scientists for the government's Joint Genome Institute want to mimic that process to produce liquid biofuel.
The process is quite simple. The enzymes break down the plant material into sugar, just like in any other digestion process. Then, in the same way they produce ethanol from corn starch, scientists can ferment the sugar into alcohol, which is essentially the liquid biofuel.
"The termites are very efficient for degrading material," says Falk Warnecke with the U.S. Energy Department
To harness this efficiency, scientists have been collecting the powerful enzymes from inside the bellies of termites.
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Source: KVOA
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