Ant army could provide bridge to biofuels

An enzyme which is found in leaf-cutter ant colonies could hold a key to unlocking biofuel production, according to researchers at the University of Wisconsin, US.

The researchers’ interest piqued after observing the ants converting plant biomass into food for energy.

‘As leaf-cutter ants are prodigious consumers of plant biomass, we hypothesized that the microbes they cultivate in their gardens were a good place to find enzymes that were particularly efficient at degrading plant biomass,’ Frank Aylward, a bacteriology graduate student and researcher with Great Lakes Bioenergy Research Centre (GLBRC), was quoted as saying.

Having already identified numerous enzymes in the genome of Leucoagaricus gongylophorus, the fungus inside the colony, Aylward believes they hold promising biotechnological applications.

But he did add that it is difficult to understand how whole communities of microbes degrade plant biomass for many technical reasons: ‘In this study, we are studying fungus gardens in situ, meaning that instead of culturing the microbes and characterizing them separately, we sought to understand how the entire community operates together.’

The overall goal of the study for GLBRC is to access and deconstruct the cellulose for ethanol or advanced biofuel production.