Groundbreaking discovery could one day be used to produce ethanol from waste products, such as thrown away orange peels, newspapers, even, cigarette butts. The process is called a "plant-derived enzyme cocktail."





Dr. Henry Daniell , from the University of Central Florida, has developed a 'groundbreaking' technique that is less expensive than current methods to make ethanol, and it is more environmentally friendly than these current ethanol production methods.Daniell states that the process his team has developed could be used to produce ethanol from the discarded peels of oranges, grapefruit, bananas, and other various fruits.In fact, Daniell states that discarded orange peels from Florida, one of the major orange producing areas of the world, could produce up to 200 million gallons of ethanol each year. [Statistics provided by the February 20, 2010 DailyTech.com article ' Breakthrough Makes Ethanol Production Cheaper Thanks to Orange Peels, Newspapers ']Currently, most ethanol production comes from corn, but the process is not very efficient and not as "green" as it should be.However, with Daniell's new process, non-food consumption waste products could be substituted for corn, such as rinds from watermelons, thrown-away newspapers, and switchgrass (produced on lands unsuitable for farm production),Page two quotes from Dr. Daniell, along with provides a summary of the process his team created to make ethanol from discarded waste products.Dr. Daniell states, "This could be a turning point where vehicles could use this fuel as the norm for protecting our air and environment for future generations." [DailyTech.com]Specifically, Daniell's team of researchers created artificial genes from bacteria and fungi, which are found in nature breaking down wood and eventually producing decay and rot in logs and other materials.The genes were placed in tobacco plants in order to produce the enzyme mixture.The researchers then put the plant-derived enzyme solution into whatever waste product is used to produce the ethanol, such as orange peels.The enzyme solution breaks down the orange peels into sugar. In the final step, the sugar is fermented into ethanol.Daniell states that producing the enzymes in tobacco plants is much less expensive than producing the enzymes with current synthetic methods.And, the Daniell method, also, produces less emissions into the environment than those emissions produced by the production of gasoline or electricity.Page three concludes with a summary from his paper's abstract in Plant Biotechnology Journal.The conclusions from the new Darniell method is published in the February 2010 issue of Plant Biotechnology Journa l.Its journal title ' Chloroplast-derived enzyme cocktails hydrolyse lignocellulosic biomass and release fermentable sugars ,' is authored by Dheeraj Verma, Anderson Kanagaraj, Shuangxia Jin, Nameirakpam D. Singh, Pappachan E. Kolattukudy and Henry Daniell, all from the Department of Molecular Biology and Microbiology, Burnett School of Biomedical Sciences, College of Medicine, University of Central Florida, Orlando, Florida.Its abstract states, 'It is widely recognized that biofuel production from lignocellulosic materials is limited by inadequate technology to efficiently and economically release fermentable sugars from the complex multi-polymeric raw materials.'In other words, the current production methods for ethanol, according to the authors, are inefficient and costly, which is one of the reasons why they wanted to develop a better method to produce ethanol.They go on to state, 'Therefore, endoglucanases, exoglucanase, pectate lyases, cutinase, swollenin, xylanase, acetyl xylan esterase, beta glucosidase and lipase genes from bacteria or fungi were expressed in Escherichia coli or tobacco chloroplasts. A PCR-based method was used to clone genes without introns from Trichoderma reesei genomic DNA."They used various genes from bacteria and fungi to make their enzyme mix."Homoplasmic transplastomic lines showed normal phenotype and were fertile. Based on observed expression levels, up to 49, 64 and 10, 751 million units of pectate lyases or endoglucanase can be produced annually, per acre of tobacco. Plant production cost of endoglucanase is 3100-fold, and pectate lyase is 1057 or 1480-fold lower than the same recombinant enzymes sold commercially, produced via fermentation.'Their process is a lot less expensive than current methods because it produces much more enzymes per acre of land.'Chloroplast-derived enzymes had higher temperature stability and wider pH optima than enzymes expressed in E. coli. Plant crude-extracts showed higher enzyme activity than E. coli with increasing protein concentration, demonstrating their direct utility without purification. Addition of E. coli extracts to the chloroplast-derived enzymes significantly decreased their activity.""Chloroplast-derived crude-extract enzyme cocktails yielded more (up to 3625%) glucose from filter paper, pine wood or citrus peel than commercial cocktails. Furthermore, pectate lyase transplastomic plants showed enhanced resistance to Erwina soft rot.'The tobacco plants used in the process were able to resist rot and decay better than other non-treated plants.They conclude in their abstract, 'This is the first report of using plant-derived enzyme cocktails for production of fermentable sugars from lignocellulosic biomass. Limitations of higher cost and lower production capacity of fermentation systems are addressed by chloroplast-derived enzyme cocktails.'