Video transcript: Meet the gribbles! (Trailer)

November 2012

Video shows the gribble

Professor Simon McQueen-Mason, Department of Biology, The University of York
What we can see on the screen here is a four-spot gribble. So these animals have specialised on living on a diet of wood. We're interested in them because they have an unusual mechanism for digesting wood.

Video shows Professor McQueen-Mason in the laboratory

The gribble is really interesting in terms of industrial biotechnology. One of the aims that we have in the near future is to be able to make fuels, biofuels out of materials which don't normally go into the food chain, like wood. So the end point of all of this research is that using what we learn from the gribble, we can lower the costs of the pre-treatment of the production of the sugars from the woody biomass so we can then have cheaper sugars that we can ferment to produce cheaper and better biofuels for our transportation systems.

Full video coming soon.

All material copyright BBSRC. Music from cinephonix.com.

ENDS

Contact

BBSRC Media Office
press.office@bbsrc.ac.uk
tel: 01793 414694
fax: 01793 413382