Technician Robab Sabzikar, left, explains the process she uses to shoot a new gene into a cell to visiting professor Iraqi Driss June 27 at the Plant and Soil Sciences Building. Sabzikar is working on “Waste to Wheels,” a project where the waste from corn plants can be genetically changed, so it can be used to produce affordable cellulosic ethanol.
Mariam Sticklen said she has found a way to produce affordable ethanol without adversely affecting the cost of food — and she did it with the help of cows.
Sticklen, an MSU professor of crop and soil sciences, said the process uses genetically modified biomass, or waste from corn plants, containing a gene from the second stomach of cows to produce cellulosic ethanol. This makes this project unique from corn ethanol currently on the market, she said.
The research project, which began about 10 years ago, is named “Waste to Wheels” in description of the way plant waste is turned into fuel for automobiles and other machines.
“There’s a lot of art in (our work) in addition to science,” Sticklen said.
The efforts of MSU researchers to produce ethanol aren’t new. Corn ethanol was first introduced in 1933 but was unsuccessful because it was too expensive, said Sang-Hyuck Park, a third-year doctoral student at MSU.
Robab Sabzikar, a laboratory technician at MSU, said there are economic and environmental benefits to using biomass rather than the edible part of the corn plant to produce ethanol.
“Usually we just throw away the waste, causing air pollution,” she said. “Most of the ethanol is (made from) corn, but we also use (corn) for food and we want to save it for food.”
Sticklen said she and other MSU researchers have developed three varieties of corn over the past few years: Spartan Corn I, Spartan Corn II and Spartan Corn III. Spartan Corn III was developed and patented this year, by introducing cow genes to corn, she said.
“Cows eat silage or waste material and there are microbes in a cow’s stomach that convert the silage into sugar,” Sticklen said.
Researchers cloned the gene from the microbes, put the gene into a microscopic, bullet-like vector and using a gene gun, injected the gene into the corn leaves, Park said. The foreign gene then grew in the plant’s leaves and stem allowing them to be converted into ethanol, he said.
Park said he uses a glucose analyzer to compare the sugar content of Spartan Corn leaves to the leaves of regular corn.
“So now we have more sugar in our (Spartan Corn) waste,” he said. “More sugar means more ethanol.”
Sticklen said about 50 research scholars, doctoral students and post-doctoral students have contributed to the project.
“Right now I’m working on genetic transformation — transforming for various traits of interest,” said Kingdom Kwapata, a second-year doctoral student. “We insert a foreign gene, for example, a gene for increasing biomass — (the gene) can be from anywhere, other species of plant, animal or bacteria.”
Sticklen said her research has been funded primarily by the Department of Energy and an MSU Research Excellence Grant.
Before Spartan Corn can be commercialized, Sticklen said it will need to be field tested and earn Food and Drug Administration certification.
A few companies have expressed interest in purchasing the licensing of the patent, but she said she could not disclose their names.
“If they move fast it could be on the market within 3 to 5 years,” she said.
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