Better fuels? Inside a cow?

Researchers looking at many different was for more affordable and environmentally sustainable bio-fuels, then using simple sugars in food crops such as corn, beets or sugar cane, they are looking for better ways to convert leaves and stems of grasses or woody plants to liquid fuel. Researchers are cutting holes into cow’s stomachs and placing a bag of grass such as switch-grass and alfalfa, to try and collect microbe’s enzymes that break down plants, breaking down plant matter and making it into energy, to us this would be like a catheter. The digestive system in the cow is allowing it to eat more than 150 pounds of plant matter every day such as milled switch-grass and alfalfa, into a permanent, surgically installed portal in the cow’s stomachs and examined the microbes that adhered to each plant type after two or three days. Microbes in the stomachs are sooner or later breaking down both types of plant matter, with different groups of microbes attacking the plant types, researchers are on to switchgrass a promising bio-fuel crop, the cows stomach is one of the best microbial habitats to explore this on the plant-degrading enzymes.