Michigan State Scientists Say Cow Stomachs Hold Key To Turning Corn Fibers Into Biofuel
Finding a cheap way to make ethanol from otherwise unusable plant fibers – as opposed to, say, corn kernels or other food crops – could make the difference between building a niche industry and one that is competitive with fossil fuels. That’s what makes a recent discovery at Michigan State University so exciting.
MSU researchers have discovered a way to grow corn plants that contain an enzyme from a microbe that lives inside a cow’s stomach. That, MSU says, is the key to turning those plants into fuel that could be used to power cars and trucks, without diverting corn from the food supply.
The enzyme – which allows a cow to digest grasses and other plant fibers – makes it much easier to unlock the sugars in the plant’s leaves and stalk. As a result, the cellulose in those parts of the plant can be converted into usable sugar without expensive synthetic chemicals now used in the creation of ethanol from cellulose.
“The fact that we can take a gene that makes an enzyme in the stomach of a cow and put it into a plant cell means that we can convert what was junk before into biofuel,” Mariam Sticklen, MSU professor of crop and soil sciences, said in a statement.
Traditionally in the commercial biofuel industry, only the kernels of corn plants – which are, of course, an important food source – could be used to make ethanol. Turning plant cellulose, or fibers, into sugar requires three enzymes. The new variety of corn created for biofuel production, called Spartan Corn III, builds on Sticklen’s earlier corn versions by containing all three necessary enzymes.
A previous version, Spartan Corn II, with a gene from a naturally occurring fungus, takes the large cellulose pieces created by the first enzyme and breaks them into sugar pairs. Spartan Corn III, with the gene from a microbe in a cow, produces an enzyme that separates pairs of sugar molecules into simple sugars. These single sugars are readily fermentable into ethanol, meaning that when the cellulose is in simple sugars, it can be fermented to make ethanol.
The Spartan Corn line was created by inserting an animal stomach microbe gene into a plant cell. The DNA assembly of the animal stomach microbe required heavy modification in the lab to make it work well in the corn cells.
Sticklen’s research was funded by the U.S. Department of Energy and Edenspace Systems Corp., the Consortium for Plant Biotechnology Research, and MSU Research Excellence Funds.
To view see an illustration of how this new variety of corn has been genetically modified, click here.
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Finding a cheap way to make ethanol from otherwise unusable plant fibers – as opposed to, say, corn kernels or other food crops – could make the difference between building a niche industry and one that is competitive with fossil fuels. That’s what makes a recent discovery at Michigan State University so exciting. 
