Two giant pandas in the Memphis Zoo have dropped researchers a gift. Studies of the pandas’ poop show that their gut microbes break down bamboo efficiently — a trick that humans could co-opt to turn woody plant material into alternative energy sources.
“We’re taking refuse — panda poop and the microbes that live there — and trying to break down another form of refuse,” says Ashli Brown, a biochemist at Mississippi State University. Brown described her team’s results on August 29 at a meeting in Denver of the American Chemical Society.
Pandas eat bamboo almost exclusively, but don’t have a multichambered stomach like cows to help digest all those plants. It’s basically in one end and out the other, and “anything residing there to break down woody material has to be very efficient,” says Candace Williams, a graduate student on Brown’s team.