Cheaper Fuel From Self-Destructing Trees

sciencehabit (1205606) writes "Wood is great for building and heating homes, but it's the bane of biofuels. When converting plants to fuels, engineers must remove a key component of wood, known as lignin, to get to the sugary cellulose that's fermented into alcohols and other energy-rich compounds. That's costly because it normally requires high temperatures and caustic chemicals. Now, researchers in the United States and Canada have modified the lignin in poplar trees to self-destruct under mild processing conditions—a trick that could slash the cost of turning plant biomass into biofuels."

Comments

More biopollution is not good news

[xiando]

Their "solution" is to genetically alter trees. It seems nobody here read the article close enough to catch that. A problem with this solution is that plants tend to spread their genes in unpredictable ways. Those "round-up"-ready genes the inventors of Agent Oragne (Monsanto) put into their seeds has already spread into the wild. If your farm is next to a farm using Monsanto sees then it's very likely that your natural seeds will be invested with these genes. The same is true here. Those "super" new trees will eventually end up spreading their fancy modified genes into natural trees. THIS IS NOT A GOOD THING.