Biofuel machines at the Chengdu Panda Research Base
The thing I like most about science is the types of projects you get when you bring in someone from an entirely different field who has new fresh ideas. I definitely wouldn’t have thought to study the bacteria that create a special enzyme that help pandas to break down bamboo as a tool for converting plant mass to biofuel, but, hey, yet another reason to save this valuable species right? and to study bamboo . . . right?
“The researchers are now working on pinpointing as many bacteria from the bears’ intestines as possible and figure out which ones are better at converting bamboo into sugars. Since it’s the enzymes in the bacteria that do the work, any plan for commercializing this concept will likely involve planting the genes of these enzymes into yeasts, growing the yeasts in large quantities and putting them to work at a biofuel processing plant, the researchers said.”
