Ethanol fuel becoming more Poplar

With oil prices surging in the past couple years, often in excess of $70 a barrel, the U.S. government is hoping to grow a forest to cure their energy woes.

The U.S. Department of Energy has visions of Poplar trees dancing in their heads as a hopeful source of ethanol fuel. As it stands right now, most Poplar tree species don't easily yield the biofuel that promises a clean, green alternative to oil.

But with a bit of genetic tinkering, and these wooden behemoths could replace corn as the best prospect for ethanol harvesting.

That's what a three-year, $1.4 million research grant to Clint Chapple of Purdue University in Indiana hopes to accomplish. Chapple has been tasked by the U.S. Department of Energy to create a DNA toolkit that'll have ethanol-producing Poplar trees sprouting out of the Earth.

The plant biochemist has garnered much scientific recognition for his discovery of the metabolic pathway that creates lignin - the second-most abundant polymer on Earth after cellulose - and the polymer that causes cell walls to stiffen.

Simply put, lignin explains by certain plants break down more easily than others and stymies ethanol production from plants that have plenty of the polymer.

So a toolkit that allows Poplar trees to be grown that will easily be broken down is a big hope in mass producing ethanol. But the plan is not without its critics.

Greenpeace and other naturalist groups are as wary of genetically-modified trees as they are of GM food on grocery store shelves. They're concerned that when unleashed into the wild, there may be no way to control where this breed of tree spreads - and that could have unforeseen consequences on the environment if it competes with natural Poplar species for room to grow.

Time will tell whether the public's desire for clean fuel and alternatives to more-expensive oil is stronger than their wariness of genetic tampering.

The research is detailed in the Feb. 9 issue of the journal Science.