Canada’s forests represent not only an established source of economic revenue, but also a potential source for biofuel substrate. Ligno-cellulosic by-products from pulp and paper processing are removed using chemicals, heat, and water. Microbial cellulose-degrading enzymes are high-value targets for industrial applications. Focused on innovative applications of synthetic biology, the undergraduate Dalhousie iGEM team has undertaken a multi-year project to harness the degradative capacity of microorganisms to convert cellulose into ethanol for biofuel applications. Advances in DNA sequencing technology and bioinformatics have revolutionized our ability to identify useful genes in complex biological samples. We hypothesize that the porcupine microbiome, which includes microorganisms capable of digesting bark and tree resin, will be a rich source of these useful genes. If our hypothesis is correct, mining the porcupine microbiome has the advantage of finding a suite of enzymes that have evolved to work in concert to efficiently degrade cellulose..