Termites are an economically important insect species because of the damage they can do to wooden structures such as houses. Termites are able to use cellulose-containing materials (such as wood and paper) as a food source because their hindguts contain a complex community of both prokaryotic and eukaryotic symbionts. Many of these symbionts, such as the protist Trichonympha and their bacterial symbionts, produce the enzyme cellulase which hydrolyzes cellulose to glucose; this glucose can then be fermented to ethanol.
Cellulose is the most abundant renewable resource on earth. As a result, there is current interest in developing efficient methods for turning cellulose into ethanol fuels. Currently, large scale commercial ethanol production utilizes corn as the starting material. However, there are some studies that have questioned the long-term sustainability of using corn for this purpose (i.e., when all costs associated with the production of ethanol from corn are totaled, and current farm subsidies are subtracted, there may be no value in this method of producing ethanol). Nobel Laureate (and former Secretary of Energy) Steven Chu has suggested that the termite may help us improve the efficiency of ethanol production:
The Chu lab has worked on genetically engineering the organisms in the termite gut to produce abundant supplies of ethanol.