We know that hundreds of species of fungi and bacteria in the guts of termites work cooperatively, secreting enzymes that break down the hard, fibrous cellulose, lignin, and other materials that give plants and trees their rigid structures. As yet, however, scientists have been unable to reproduce individual species of micro-organisms in the lab because they still know very little about what each one eats and secretes in the microbial soup bowl that is the termite’s digestive tract. So researchers are employing a workaround that they hope will allow them to reliably tease out these organisms’ various demolition methods.

Dozens of companies around the world are applying the techniques that were used to sequence the human genome in an attempt to create designer versions of the enzyme cocktails secreted by these microbes. Instead of trying to grow the organisms, researchers are cloning the genes that code for the desired enzymes and splicing them into common bacteria that are good media for reproduction. Once the genes are reproduced by the bacteria, they can be stored and subsequently used in experiments aimed at figuring out which combinations of enzymes are most effective at breaking down particular types of biomass. The enzymes are also engineered so that less pretreatment of the feedstock is required during the processing phase.

That’s why termites have gained a measure of esteem. If they turn out to have the key to making ethanol production from biomass economically feasible, then what was once just waste will be a valuable commodity.

“Not long ago, rice producers were asking if we could make paper out of [the waste product] rice straw, because environmental abatement rules said they could no longer burn it and they didn’t know what to do with it,” says Arthur J. Ragauskas, a biochemistry professor at the Georgia Institute of Technology, in Atlanta. “Now those unwanted leftovers are poised to become a basic resource for biofuel.”

Some companies are already making ethanol from woody material, but not on a commercial scale, says Kevin Gray, director of alternative fuels at Diversa Corp., in San Diego, one of the companies refining the enzymes found in termites’ innards. In April 2004, Iogen Corp., an Ottawa-based biotech firm, became the first business to sell cellulosic ethanol. It operates a facility that each day processes 30 metric tons of wheat, oat, and barley straw, using enzymes that, though not derived from termites, turn the chaff into sugar.

Iogen’s demonstration plant turns out 2.5 million liters of ethanol a year—a drop in the bucket considering that, on average, an equivalent amount of gasoline is consumed in the United States every 2.5 minutes. An Iogen spokesman noted that a commercial facility would, in the future, process upwards of 700 metric tons of feedstock per day, yielding approximately 75 million liters of ethanol per year.

But Gray explains that in order to reach commercial viability, enzymatic reactions and other steps in the biomass-to-ethanol process, including the chemical pretreatment of feedstock, have to be optimized. And, he says, the cost has to be reduced by about a factor of five.

Gray and other scientists are optimistic that as they learn more about life inside termites’ guts—and, too, as plants are genetically engineered to more readily turn to sugar—the production of cellulosic ethanol will ensure that corn remains on dinner plates instead of at fuel pumps. Asked when commercial production of ethanol from biomass would begin, Gray said it might be possible in as little as five years.