ENERGY SOLUTIONS :

An Appetite for Collaboration

When Professor Susan Leschine first recognized that a hardy little microbe had the potential to become an environmental hero, her scientific curiosity fused with a clear sense of duty.

“If you suddenly have something that has the potential to be very useful, I think all scientists should feel an obligation to seeing it through and seeing whether it can be beneficial,” says Leschine, the discoverer of the Q Microbe, a tiny bug that has proven to be amazingly efficient at converting cellulose, non-food plant matter, into engine-firing ethanol.

“Once we recognized that this work could really benefit the world, that it could help reduce carbon dioxide emissions—well, that’s huge. I felt an obligation.”

Leschine says the Q Microbe is important because it can do so many things: provide a clean alternative to fossil fuels that can be produced in a way that is carbon neutral, help to boost rural economies, and aid the nation’s quest for energy independence.

And because of the Q Microbe’s appetite for cellulose, there would be no need to consume a source of food, like corn, as can be the case with other biofuels production processes.

Leschine, a professor of microbiology at UMass Amherst, remembers the “eureka moment” in the Q Microbe discovery process.

“We were doing an experiment for a completely different purpose and as we grew the bug on higher and higher amounts of the cellulose, which is the main component of plants and the toughest component to break down, we were shocked to see that it converted the cellulose almost completely into ethanol.”

“My technician, Tom Warnick, got the data from the experiment and came into my office to show it to me and said, ‘You’re not going to believe this.’ It was a big surprise. It was a real eureka moment.”

The Q Microbe, which is actually a strain of the soil-dwelling bacterium Clostridium phytofermentans, was harvested from soil near the shores of the Quabbin Reservoir and in 2002 was recognized as a novel organism. The microbe was contained in a soil sample Warnick gathered as he hiked along the Quabbin, the 400-billion gallon reservoir that provides water to Greater Boston.

Noted for its appetite for all things cellulose —including switchgrass, wood pulp, and corn plant waste—the Q Microbe is highly efficient at converting biomass to ethanol. And it does so in a carbon-neutral process that doesn’t require the additional enzyme treatments that usually accompany bioethanol production.

The microbe is unusual in its ability to consume a wide variety of plant material. It breaks down cellulose with ease, the notoriously tough molecule that’s the primary component of plant biomass. Leschine’s team surveyed the microbe’s dietary preferences, feeding it everything from wood pulp waste to sugar cane bagasse, the plant matter that’s left over once sugar cane is crushed. Pectin, starch, xylan, and other plant polymers that can be difficult to digest were no problem for the voracious Q.

The breathtaking promise of the Q Microbe has led to the creation of a company, now known as Qteros, that is seeking to bring the production of cellulosic ethanol to the marketplace.

Leschine serves as chief scientist of the Marlborough-based company, which employs 25 people and is working to develop the technology and production processes needed to make the concept a biofuels reality.

The licensing of the Q Microbe technology represents another success story for UMass Amherst’s industrial relations and technology transfer programs, working in collaboration with the system Office of Commercial Ventures and Intellectual Property. Technology licensing helped to generate $41 million in intellectual property income in Fiscal Year 2007, making UMass a national leader in the area. In addition, the Massachusetts Technology Transfer Center showcased Q Microbe technology at its 2008 Clean Energy Conference.

A member of the UMass Amherst community since 1976, Leschine says her breakthrough was made possible by a culture of collaboration that exists on the campus, particularly in the biofuels cluster, which has rapidly become one of the University’s signature research areas.

“This didn’t just come out of my lab; it is the result of interactions with other people on campus who were interested in biofuels. We have on the Amherst campus groups of investigators who are working very hard on the basic science but with an eye toward seeing how discoveries may be used, seeing innovation through to the marketplace. This is a prevalent idea.” Leschine says collaboration is “essential to driving science” and has been critical to her work.

“This would not be happening if it weren’t for my collaborations with microbiologists, including experts in genome science; with biochemists, who understand the enzymes produced by the microbe; and with cellular engineers and process engineers,” she notes. “So this sort of work cuts across colleges and disciplines. Collaboration will drive basic research and innovation.”