In the last 10 years advances in biotechnology have reduced the cost of bioethanol by almost 25%. The DOE bioethanol program targets process improvements intended to allow bioethanol to compete with gasoline in the marketplace. Researchers are utilizing biomass feedstock for bioethanol conversion. The bioethanol conversion technology depends on hydrolysis and fermentation. To maximize biomass fermentation, biotechnology researchers have produced new strains of yeast and bacteria.

PET is uniquely capable of providing information on biochemical transformations in the living human body. Although most of the studies of monoamine oxidase (MAO) have focused on measurements in the brain, the role of peripheral MAO as a phase 1 enzyme for the metabolism of drugs and xenobiotics is gaining attention (Strolin Benedetti and Tipton, 1998; Castagnoli et al., 1997.). MAO is well suited for this role because its concentration in organs such as kidneys, liver and digestive organs is high sometimes exceeding that in the brain. Knowledge of the distribution of the MAO subtypes within different organs and different cells is important in determining which substrates (and which drugs and xenobiotics) have access to which MAO subtypes. The highly variable subtype distribution with different species makes human studies even more important. In addition, the deleterious side effects of combining MAO inhibitors with other drugs and with foodstuffs makes it important to know the MAO inhibitory potency of different drugs both in the brain and in peripheral organs (Ulus et al., 2000). Clearly PET can play a role in answering these questions, in drug research and development and in discovering some of the factors which contribute to the highly variable …