Promising fuel source

Tobacco can be genetically engineered to produce large volumes of cellulase, a bacterial enzyme that can be used for the production of biofuel among other applications, according to a new study published in Nature Plants.

The finding could help lower costs for producing useful proteins like enzymes and some vaccines, according to co-lead author Justin McGrath, a plant biologist at the University of Illinois. It can be considerably cheaper to cultivate tobacco plants in a field than to grow genetically modified yeast and other microbes indoors in large fermenters.

“Our estimates from this study are that it would cost between 20 cents and one dollar to produce a gram of this cellulase, whereas current methods, depending on the type of method you’re using, could cost from a couple hundred dollars to a couple thousand dollars,” McGrath was quoted as saying in Scientific American.

To prevent DNA inserted into the crop from finding its way into other organisms, researchers worked in the chloroplasts—organelles responsible for photosynthesis not reproduction.