Tiny microbe may help dispose of farm manure

Commercial hog and chicken farms produce huge amounts of manure and disposing of it properly is a growing problem around the nation.

SCOTT MCMILLION Chronicle Staff Writer

However, a little microbe from a Yellowstone hot spring might just provide a solution.

The Thermal Biology Institute at Montana State University has found a hot-spring-dwelling microbe that secretes an enzyme called phytase.

That enzyme allows feeder animals to better digest grains such as barley and soy, which means their manure contains less nutrition for bacteria that create alge blooms in streams, which can remove oxygen from water and choke out other life forms, like fish.

•• so exactly what problem does that solve?

Feedlots already spray animal food with phytase and spend $580 million a year doing it. However, the new enzyme can withstand the high temperatures used to cook grain into feed pellets.

It can be produced in large quantities by growing the microbe in a "soup culture" and separating everything with a centrifuge, explained Tim McDermott, TBI’s codirector.

The next step is finding a market for the enzyme.

That’s where Bozeman’s Tech Ranch comes in.

McDermott and others have formed a new company called Envirozyme, and Tech Ranch is helping it get started. It’s the first project undertaken with a new $600,000 National Science Foundation grant.

"There’s a lot of value in the industrial enzyme world," said John O’Donnell, executive director of Tech Ranch and its parent company, Technology Venture Center. "We’re very bullish on this market."

Specialists from both coasts are looking at the financial, marketing and legal hurdles, O’Donnell said.

"There are a lot of questions we’re trying to figure out," he said.

But if the company gets going, the goal is to keep it in Montana.

"Why license this to a company in San Diego or Texas and watch more good stuff leave the state?" O’Donnell said. "We want to decrease the brain drain."

If it works, the company will create good jobs and produce profits both for company owners and for MSU, which would earn 50 percent of licensing fees.

"It’s a positive spin that goes around to everybody," McDermott said.