Why Drill for Oil When You Can Sift Soil?

In the fall of 1998, Dr. Susan Leschine, a microbiology professor at Amherst, was sifting through the soil at the Quabbin Reservoir. As she has done for more than two decades, she was looking for new and interesting microbes.

Little did she expect that the microbe she discovered that day, and that she named the Clostridium Phytofermentium, might eventually have major economic and even political ramifications.
The microbe -– and the company trying to commercialize it — today got funding in the millions of dollars from several venture capital funds and from VeraSun Energy, a large, public renewable fuels firm.

It turns out that a strain of the microbe (known as the Q-Microbe) has the property of being able to convert biomass – like switchgrass and wood pulp – into ethanol.

The company trying to commercialize the microbe and its properties is SunEthanol, and Dr. Leschine now serves as a senior advisor. SunEthanol declined to disclose the amount of investment it received today but said it is in the “multimillion dollars.”

The investment is part of a widespread effort from investors and innovators to discover and fund economically viable means of producing ethanol. Their challenge is not so much to produce ethanol, but to do so efficiently enough to compete against the price of unearthing and delivering petroleum; thus far, the economics have greatly favored the oil and gas producers.

According to Dr. Leschine, the Q-Microbe has a voracious appetite for many forms of plant life and the ability to convert it efficiently into fuel. SunEthanol and its backers said they plan to put the Microbe to work by 2009 converting corn stover at a production plant in Missouri.

New York Times