For Fueling and Electrifying Modern Life

Editor's Note: This occasional series looks at powerful ideas some existing, some futuristic
for fueling and electrifying modern life.

Helping a fungus have sex could lead to better ways of making biofuels, scientists now suggest.
To make renewable biofuels, instead of manufacturing them from the sugars in food crops,
researchers want to employ organisms that can make use of the hundreds of millions of tons of
cellulose in sawdust, weeds and other plant scrap that would otherwise go to waste.
One especially promising organism when it comes to breaking down cellulose is the soil fungus
Trichoderma reesei. It was originally discovered in the Solomon Islands during World War II
eating away at the canvas and garments of the U.S. Army.
Improving this fungus was difficult because scientists thought it was asexual, which meant they
couldn't breed different useful strains of it together for offspring better tailored to degrade
cellulose.
Now researchers in Austria find this fungus isn't asexual after all. For the first time after its
discovery more than 50 years ago, researchers have made it have sex.
The group this fungus belongs to, Trichoderma, includes several hundred species, including both
sexual and asexual ones. By probing their DNA, investigators uncovered the genes responsible
for mating and found them in Trichoderma reesei, proving it was theoretically capable of sex.
However, it could not assume the female role.
Past studies had revealed that Trichoderma reesei was in fact genetically identical to another
fungus, Hypocrea jecorina, which could assume both the male and female roles. The scientists
managed to successfully mate Hypocrea jecorina with two mutant Trichoderma reesei strains
known to be especially good at breaking down cellulose with existing wild strains.
Although researchers could in the past dose the fungus with radiation or chemicals to randomly
create potentially useful mutations, "it was not possible to combine beneficial mutations of
efficient production strains," said researcher Monika Schmoll, a microbiologist at the Vienna
University of Technology. " Now it has become possible to cross these strains and mix their
genetic material. Of course there is no guarantee that the combination of properties really results
in even better strains, but in many cases it will work."
Sex can also lead to more fit strains. The methods used to create mutants could lead to strains of
Trichoderma reesei that are good at making enzymes that break down cellulose, but otherwise
"sometimes look quite poor and helpless," Schmoll explained. By crossing such a mutant with an
ordinary 'wild-type' strain of the fungus, "there is the chance to preserve the high enzyme
production, but to get rid of mutations that reduce growth and fitness by replacement with wildtype genes."
These findings might lead to better and more cost-effective ways of making biofuel. "I would be
happy to see gas stations selling affordable bioethanol made from waste and plant material one
day," Schmoll said. The researchers also noted that Trichoderma includes species that help plants
by killing harmful fungi, and discovering ways of breeding strains of them together could help
out farmers.
In the future, Schmoll and her colleagues want to find out what leads to this absence of females
in Trichoderma reesei in the first place. If they do, they could reverse the situation, she
explained.
The researchers detailed their findings online August 10 in the Proceedings of the National
Academy of Sciences.
Fruiting body of Trichoderma reesei (Hypocrea jecorina), which has previously been
assumed asexual.
CREDIT: V. Seidl, Vienna University of Technology.
Beer helps in making biofuel

Editor's Note: This occasional series looks at powerful ideas some existing, some futuristic
for fueling and electrifying modern life.
After beer is made, the waste from breweries could help generate power, researchers now
suggest.
One problem brewers face is what to do with the thousands of tons of grain left over at the end of
the brewing process. In the past, they just sold the waste to farmers who either fed it to their
animals or spread it on their fields as fertilizer. However, in Europe, given reductions in cattle
breeding and stricter regulations on what waste is allowed on land, neither option is as easy
anymore.
"We reached a situation in 2000 where breweries even had to pay to dispose of their spent grain,"
said researcher Wolfgang Bengel, the technical director of BMP Biomasse Projekt, a German
biomass company.
Instead of a headache, Bengel saw a business opportunity. He had previously taken waste from
rice and sugar cane and produced energy from it in China and Thailand, and thought a similar
process could be developed for brewery leftovers. Such energy could help fuel the breweries
themselves.
"Beer making is energy intensive you boil stuff, use hot water and steam and then use electric
energy for cooling so if you recover more than 50 percent of your own energy costs from the
spent grain, that's a big saving," Bengel explained.
The wet grain and wastewater is put into a fermenter loaded with bacteria that break down
organic compounds to generate methane. The biogas and dried sludge from the fermenter are
then burned to boil water and produce high-pressure steam, which in turn drives a turbine to
generate power.
Using this process, "a modern energy efficient brewery may regain 60 percent of their total
energy demand," Bengel told LiveScience.
Extra cleaning and filtering equipment were added to meet high European standards for
combustion emissions.
The partners are now trying to attract commercial contracts from those wanting to become
greener beer makers. Breweries could pay for and install the equipment themselves, or perhaps
waste management firms could make the investment on the machines in return for selling the
energy back to breweries. A number of interested companies have been shown around their test
plant, Bengel noted.

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Editor's Note: This occasional series looks at powerful ideas some existing, some futuristic

for fueling and electrifying modern life.

Beer helps in making biofuel

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