Guest Post: A Study of Termites and Biofuel

I am a first year PhD student from UWA. I have recently handed in my project proposal so it's a great time to share my plans with you. In a sentence, my project is about studying the gut flora of local termite species to find cellulase enzymes useful for the production of bioethanol in Western Australia. 

Let me give you a bit of background...

As you all probably know, fossil fuels are a finite resource and their use contributes to climate change. There is a lot of research going into cleaner, renewable sources of energy. I think this is not an easy problem to solve and that in the end it is probably a combination of solutions that will come into play. Anyway, biofuels are one way to tackle this issue. Bioethanol is a type of biofuel. It is ethanol made from biomass (recently dead or living biological material).

Bioethanol is already being produced in many countries and in Australia for example you can already buy E10 (blend of 10% bioethanol, 90% petrol which can be used in most cars) or E85 (can only be used in 3 car models in Australia).

The problem is, the current technology uses what we call 'first generation feedstocks'. These include sugar- or starch- based materials such as sugar cane, corn or wheat grains. Obviously these are food sources and therefore not an ideal situation in today's world.

An alternative is to use second generation feedstocks: lignocellulosic matter otherwise known as plant matter. We're talking the part we can't digest. So for example you could use crop residue such as straw (which is currently mostly being wasted and burnt) as a transport fuel.

Ok, sounds great! How do we do that?

Well, it is already happening on a small scale but it turns out that it is not easy to turn grass into sugar to be fermented into ethanol. The biomass needs to be chopped up and treated to make the cellulose accessible to enzymes. Then those enzymes can break the cellulose into sugar and the sugar can be fermented. All of this needs to be researched further to make it viable.

This is where I come in!

I study termites because they are very successful at breaking down plant matter in their guts. So much so that they have the bad reputation of eating people's houses. While I'm at it I'd like to clear their name a little. Termites actually play a very important ecological role by recycling nutrients and aerating the soil. They do the same job as the earthworm does in the Northern hemisphere. Besides, most termite species are not interested in your house (only about 300 out of the 3000 known species worldwide are pests).

So termites can eat various forms of lignocellulose such as wood, grass, and even decomposing cellulose in soil and dung! They produce their own cellulase enzymes and also have a diverse gut population to do the trick. I'm interested in their gut bacteria because they are likely to contain many unknown enzymes that could turn out to be really good for biofuel production.

In Western Australia we produce a lot of wheat (mostly in the Wheatbelt) and farmers are being encouraged to grow eucalyptus mallee (fairly short trees with multiple trunks) around their fields to help fight salinity in the soil and break the wind to protect the crops. Both wheat crop residue and eucalyptus mallee would make good bioethanol feedstocks in WA.

So in brief, I aim to bring termites into the lab, feed them wheat residue and eucalyptus and find out if their gut bacteria adapt to breaking down those substrates. For example if more of a particular enzyme is produced when the termite feeds on wheat, then I know that it is potentially useful for the industry.

That was a quick overview of what I plan to do for the next few years. I hope you found it intriguing...

Ghislaine Small is currently a PHD student at the University of Western Australia. She moved to Australia eight years ago from France and has always been fascinated by science. She studied microbiology (the study of microorganisms such as bacteria) and genetics (the study of genes and DNA) at UWA and wanted to include both of these into her Honours and PHD projects. She also strives to share her enthusiasm for biology by demonstrating in labs for first year students.