But the Energy Department has set a much more conservative, "stable-market" target of $55 a barrel for 2012. To be cost competitive with gasoline from oil at that price level, she said, "We need these enzyme systems to cost around 10 cents a gallon. So we're not there yet."
S. degradans was discovered in 1986 in the marshes of Mathews County, Va., near the mouth of the Rappahannock River. A large tract of marsh grass was dying, and scientists were called to determine whether some sort of pollution was responsible.
A biologist from George Mason University isolated a curious new bacterium from the decaying grass and eventually gave a sample to Ron Weiner, a UM colleague of Hutcheson's.
Thanks to its native microorganisms, the bay marsh has "a very high productivity, yet very little material accumulates," Hutcheson said.
S. degradans appears to have been be a particularly competent member of that native waste disposal community, he said. "It's pretty nondescript, a common variety of bacterium. It's in the same family as E. coli."
That species is commonly found in mammalian digestive tracts. But it is still not clear where S. degradans came from or where it has gone since then.
Hutcheson has squirreled away frozen repositories of the organism to ensure a resupply in the event his working batches are swept by a virus or somehow contaminated.
What makes the stuff remarkable is its ferocious appetite for cellulose. The 70 enzymes that it manufactures are tools for unraveling the complex sugars that form the tough cellulose in plant cell walls. It's the largest diversity of such enzymes Hutcheson has ever encountered in one organism.
By the summer of 2006, Hutcheson had found that S. degradans was easy and inexpensive to grow in the large quantities and high densities that industrial enzyme production requires.
The bacteria don't need any genetic engineering and can't escape the processing plant alive because it dies quickly in rain or fresh water.
His team also found that the enzyme mix they extracted - patented as Ethazyme - could happily digest a tasty batch of processed waste paper.
In 2006, Hutcheson raised a small amount of capital from friends and family, and from his own pocket, and incorporated as Zymetis Inc.
Through the university's MTECH Venture Accelerator, he got help developing a financial model and business plan. He established contact with other ethanol producers and potential business partners, and found guidance with his initial hiring.
"I'm a research scientist," he said. "I knew at the very beginning I needed help in this regard. ... The Venture Accelerator played a critical role."
MTECH's Bioprocess Scale-Up Facility also provided expertise in figuring out how to mass produce the bacteria.
Zymetis has hired Steven Davey, 49, of Ellicott City as his chief operating officer. He's a chemical engineer with a degree in business finance and a background with chemical giant W.R. Grace.
Davey said he wanted to work in alternative energy, because it is "a great way for our country to be self-sufficient from the energy standpoint."
Now, he said, "My job is to do everything I can to get Steve [Hutcheson] back to the lab."
frank.roylance@baltsun.com
