Bad fungus may be good biofuel producer

WALNUT CREEK, Calif., May 5 (UPI) -- U.S. scientists have found a biomass-degrading fungus has few genes used to break down plant cell walls, providing a possible use in biofuel production.

The discovery of the fungus Trichoderma reesei as the cause of the deterioration of uniforms and tents in the South Pacific dates to World War II. Now scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy's Joint Genome Institute in California and the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico are studying the fungus for its source of enzymes, particularly cellulases and hemicellulases, being tested to catalyze the deconstruction of plant cell walls as a first step toward the production of biofuels from lignocellulose.

"The information generated from the genome of T. reesei provides us with a road map for accelerating research to optimize fungal strains for reducing the current prohibitively high cost of converting lignocellulose to fermentable sugars," said Eddy Rubin, the institute's director. "Improved industrial enzyme 'cocktails' from T. reseei and other fungi will enable more economical conversion of biomass from such feedstocks as … switchgrass, wood from fast-growing trees like poplar, agricultural crop residues, and municipal waste, into next-generation biofuels."

The research appears in the journal Nature Biotechnology.