Work conducted by an international team, co-ordinated by Dr Jonathan Woodward of the US Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee, has shown that enzymes from thermophiles can be to produce hydrogen from sugar very economically."There are huge amounts of hydrogen in natural resources that go unused today," Dr Woodward says, "in the shape of agricultural wastes such as straw, that are burnt or buried. We set out to find ways of breaking these down in an environment-friendly way using enzymes, until hydrogen was released. We already knew how to convert the main constituents of such wastes - cellulose, starch and lactose - into glucose sugar using an enzyme. The next step was to find an enzyme which could oxidise glucose, release hydrogen gas and be used industrially. We've found one, and it works."The enzyme that breaks down glucose to produce hydrogen was discovered by Dr Michael Danson at Bath University. A Centre for Extremophile Research is being inaugurated there on 27 September this year. The enzyme comes from yet another thermophile that lives around deep-sea volcanic vents - a bacterium called Thermoplasma.

The other enzyme needed, the one that breaks down cellulose to produce glucose, was isolated from our old friend Pyrococcus furiosus by a third research team, at the University of Georgia in the US.Jonathan Woodward saw the potential of combining the two to unleash the hydrogen economy. Not only do these two enzymes acting together provide a reliable way of producing large amounts of hydrogen from what are now wastes. They also produce gluconic acid - a raw material required for making a number of industrial chemicals. This extra commercial advantage, coupled with the proven toughness of thermophile enzymes, makes Dr David Hough of Bath University, who is involved in setting up the new Centre, believe the hydrogen economy is at last on the horizon."I would say it is certainly a possibility," he says, "if we can develop a bioreactor that contains the two enzymes. You would pump in agricultural raw materials at one end, and collect hydrogen at the other.