Wood Eating Gribbles May Hold Key To Biofuels

MikeChino writes "What's a gribble? It's a tiny marine shrimp found on the southern coast of Britain — and its ability to digest wood may provide a breakthrough in efficient biofuel production. Researchers are studying the gribble's digestion process at a new UK bioenergy center in order to synthetically copy the process so that grasses, husk, straw and willow can be converted more efficiently into biofuels. The scientists reckon that information learned from the gribble could increase the efficiency of biofuel conversion by a factor of 6, making biofuels even more cost effective while utilizing non-food crops."