Half the automotive fuel in the United States could be replaced with ethanol from renewable agricultural and forest waste, says a University of Florida researcher who has developed a biotechnology "bug" that converts biomass such as sugarcane residues, rice hulls, forestry and wood wastes and other organic materials into ethanol . Lonnie Ingram, a professor of microbiology with UF's Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences has genetically engineered a stratin of E.Coli that produces fuel ethanol from non-edible sugar sources at an estimated cost of $1.30 gallon. gram, who is director of the Florida Center for Renewable Chemicals and Fuels at UF, cited a recent report from the U.S. Department of Agriculture and DOE that indicates more than one billion tons of biomass can be produced on a sustainable basis each year. Converting this to fuel ethanol could replace half of all imported petroleum in the United States. Ingram said he genetically engineered the E. coli organisms by cloning the unique genes needed to direct the digestion of sugars into ethanol. With the ethanol genes, the engineered bacteria produce ethanol from biomass sugars with 90 to 95 percent efficiency. Video originally aired on Eco- Tech and is property of the Science Channel. http://science.discovery.com/tv-schedules/series.html?paid=48.13780.122449.34341.1