In its native habitat, the gribble – a marine isopod about a tenth of an inch long – is a seagoing menace, eating holes in the hulls of wooden ships and boats, and even taking out the wooden piers on which fisherman and tourists walk.

In another venue, namely biofuel production, the tiny gribble may become a superstar, quickly and cheaply converting wood, straw, corncobs and the like into nutrient-rich plant sugars, and from there into alcohol-based fuels to run combustion engines like the one in your car or truck.

At least that’s what British scientists from York and Portsmouth University think, and their idea, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, suggests that the loathsome-looking little bug with many legs can digest woody substances with an ease not found in any other member of the creepy kingdom.

Gribbles, which look like pinkish or yellowish woodlice, digest the wood via cellulases, or enzymes, that they produce in their gut. The species currently under the microscope, at either York or Portsmouth University, is Limnoria quadripunctata (call it “L. quad” for short).

Among sailing enthusiasts and members of Long Island Sound’s yacht clubs, this little dude has been identified as one of the three most destructive versions of Limnoria. The other two, L. lignorum and L. tripunctata, rank alongside L. quad in destructive capacity, and – like villains in every venue – their exact origin is unknown, though scientists speculate that they may be descended from wood-boring worms (though clearly not from Dale Gribble or his father Bug). Currently, gribbles related to L. quad are charged with eating away at the timber platform on top of Seattle’s seawall.

The scientists located this amazing enzyme after studying the digestive tracts of L. quad, where it is genetically coded. The finding may not surprise criminal profilers, who cite genes as causing at least half the mischief in this world, but its discovery promises a new era of biofuels that don’t cause starvation by using foodstocks, or soil depletion via “factory farming” of trees, plants or grasses.

The research comes from the efforts of the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC), whose $39-million Sustainable Bioenergy Centre is searching for an alternative to fossil-fuel driven transportation, according to member Duncan Eggar.

If gribble gas becomes the solution to cheap and easily-produced biofuel, it could be combined with solar cells on hybrid vehicles to deliver a completely emissions-free ride, with the battery getting its daily charge from the solar cells instead of an electric socket, and the gas kicking in when the battery is low and the sun isn’t shining.

This, in fact, is the reason experts say that hybrid vehicles aren’t truly “green”; they get their charge from an electricity generation mix that is 49 percent coal, at least across most of the continental U.S. The balance of that generation mix is largely gas and oil, with nuclear providing about 20 percent, hydro just over seven percent, and renewables like solar and wind providing less than one percent each.

Of course, making transportation completely environmentally friendly depends on improved solar-cell efficiency, but once that goal is achieved the combination of gribble gas and solar energy could keep traffic moving without pollution and pricey gasoline. It could also end America’s dependence on foreign oil.