Geneticist is breeding a greener fuel source

URI team hoping to cut cost of making ethanol

A research team at the University of Rhode Island is working to engineer a new variety of switchgrass that could be widely used to produce ethanol.

“Project Golden Switchgrass” aims to double the biomass of the 12-foot-tall prairie grass, to 20 tons an acre, and to introduce new genetic traits that would make it easier to convert the grass to ethanol.

If grown commercially today, native switchgrass could produce ethanol for about $2.70 per gallon, but by genetically tweaking a number of plant traits, researchers hope to bring that production cost as low as $1 per gallon, said Albert Kausch, a plant geneticist who heads the project.

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Kausch said he and his team of more than 20 scientists are close to producing their first switchgrass patent, and their project has attracted the attention of biotech venture capitalists from as far away as India. U.S. Sen. Jack Reed visited the lab in October.

“We’re trying to develop the variety of switchgrass that everyone needs,” Kausch said.
Ethanol – the same kind of alcohol found in beer, wine and hard liquor – can be used to power automobiles and other vehicles. It burns much more cleanly than gasoline and produces far fewer harmful emissions.

Most of the fuel-grade ethanol produced today is made from corn. But Kausch, who spent many years genetically modifying corn before turning to turf grasses, is among those who believe switchgrass is a better choice for ethanol production.

Unlike corn, switchgrass can be grown on marginal soil, it is useful as wildlife habitat, and it is a perennial plant that requires little use of fertilizers, insecticides and irrigation, Kausch said, making the grass a “greener” crop and one that’s much cheaper to grow.

And, Kausch noted, genetically modifying corn to ease ethanol production cheaper would raise the risk of accidentally introducing the new genes into corn that’s grown for eating.

“There may be genes we use to accelerate ethanol production that we don’t want in the food chain,” he said. “That makes switchgrass attractive, because it’s not a food.”

Kausch is now genetically engineering switchgrass that is both resistant to herbicides and does not flower or reproduce.

Engineering sterile switchgrass to be sterile serves a double function, he said: first, it ensures that the genetically modified organisms cannot escape into the environment to alter the DNA of wild switchgrass; second, sterile plants do not use their energy to produce flowers, so they produce more biomass, which in turn can produce more ethanol.

Kausch and his team also are working to design genes that would improve upon a long list of other traits, such as drought tolerance, salt tolerance and cold tolerance, all of which would make switchgrass more valuable for ethanol production.

In particular, Kausch and professors at Brown University are working to introduce an enzyme into switchgrass that would help degrade its cellulose for a more-efficient conversion to ethanol.

The process of converting the plant cells to sugar is currently so expensive, it makes using unaltered switchgrass to produce ethanol commercially unprofitable, he said.

“Right now, you add enzymes to switchgrass when making ethanol. We need to make that step cheaper,” Kausch said. “If we can introduce enzymes into the plant, it will dramatically reduce the processing cost.”

Kausch expects to have test plots of genetically modified plants on the URI campus within two years, and he hopes the first varieties will be in commercial production by 2011.

Not all of his research involves genetic engineering, however. He and his team also are working to identify native switchgrass varieties that can be bred today that would cheapen the cost of ethanol.

Ultimately, Kausch said, the speed with which his project and others develop new, cheap biofuels will depend on the commitment of funding and other resources by the federal government.

“If we really put the pedal to metal – no pun intended – I think we’ll get there a lot faster.”

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