Insects could be key to overcoming what U.S. President George W. Bush calls America's addiction to oil, according to scientists. Researchers and several companies are working with termites, jungle insects and other microbes to find new ways to convert wood, corn stalks and other plant waste into sugars that are easily brewed into ethanol, a chemical that can be used to power automobiles. "The process is like making grain alcohol, or brewing beer, but on a much bigger scale," said Nathanael Greene, an analyst with the environmental nonprofit Natural Resources Defense Council. "The technologies are out there to do this, but we need to convince the public this is real and not just a science project." Breaking cellulose into sugar to turn straw into ethanol has been studied for at least 50 years. But the scientific and financial obstacles have thus far been too great to make the research profitable, forcing most ethanol producers to rely on heavy government subsidies to produce the fuel from corn. But researchers are now exploring ways of using microbes, one-cell creatures that serve as the first link in the food chain, to produce ethanol. One company uses the microbe itself to produce the fuel. Others are taking the genes that make the waste-to-fuel enzymes and splicing them into common bacteria. A new breed of "synthetic biologists" is even working to create the enzymes by producing entirely new life forms using DNA technology. New breakthroughs in the research come as Bush pledged to wean America off foreign-produced oil. "We have been at this for 25 years and we had hoped to be in commercial production by now," said Jeff Passmore, an executive vice president at ethanol-maker Iogen Incorporated. "What the president has done is - perhaps - put some wind in the sails." Passmore's company works with modified fungus microbes that can produce large amounts of digestive enzymes to break down straw into sugars. From there, a simple fermentation turns the sugar into ethanol. Despite Bush's comments, challenges for the industry remain. Investors are often wary of the technology, and the industry has yet to convince car manufacturers to produce cars that run on ethanol and gas stations to install pumps for the new fuel.
