A species of bacteria discovered 22 years ago as it gobbled marsh grass along the Chesapeake Bay has become the secret weapon in a Maryland startup's bid to produce ethanol fuels from waste paper.
Dubbed Saccharophagus degradans, for "sugar eater," the bacterium produces at least 70 different enzymes to digest the hard cellulose in plant matter and turn it into simple sugars.
Add a little yeast, and those sugars ferment to make ethanol, a biofuel that the federal government hopes will reduce the United States' dependence on petroleum imports and cut greenhouse gas emissions.
The discovery has Maryland officials - among them Gov. Martin O'Malley, who will tour the startup company this morning - dreaming of a big-time biotechnology breakthrough for the state.
"This is very exciting ... one of those extraordinary examples of how research in Maryland may actually be used to change the world," said O'Malley spokesman Rick Abbruzzese. "It shows great promise for helping our country and our state secure our energy future by producing ethanol with very little waste product."
The discovery of S. degradans was pure serendipity, and more than a dozen attempts to retrieve more of it from the bay marshes have failed.
But University of Maryland microbiologist Steven Hutcheson acquired, preserved and bred the descendants of the original batch. And now he's developed a process for putting their cellulose-eating enzymes to work producing ethanol on a commercial scale.
Hutcheson is the founder and CEO of Zymetis Inc., a startup born in 2006 in a University of Maryland business incubator. Together with Fiberight, a company in Lawrenceville, Va., that extracts cellulose from nonrecylable municipal waste, Hutcheson hopes to launch a full-scale waste-to-ethanol demonstration plant by early next year - possibly in Baltimore's Curtis Bay area.
Production could reach 3.5 million gallons a year - a tiny part of the region's needs, he said, but a start.
"We believe we have the most economical way to make the novel, efficient enzymes needed to produce biofuels from cellulosic materials," Hutcheson said.
The 53-year-old Columbia resident took a leave of absence from teaching to get his new company on its feet, with a boost from the university's MTECH Venture Accelerator Program.
O'Malley was scheduled to tour Zymetis' lab this morning to highlight the university's latest spinoff company and the College Park business incubator program.
