Cell Wall Engineering Group
Background
Currently, biofuels, such as ethanol are produced largely from starch that comes from grains, but it represents only a little proportion of sugar polymer availability on Earth. Large quantities of sugar from polysaccharides that are not utilized thus far are cellulose and hemicellulose, which are the main constituent of plant cell walls. The energy efficiency of starch-based biofuels is however not optimal, while plant cell walls (lignocellulose) represent a huge resource for BioEnergy since plant cell walls are composed of 95-70% of sugar. The rest of the plant cell walls (5-30%) is mainly composed of lignin, which is a very strong phenolic polymer recalcitrant to degradation and inhibits efficient extraction of sugars from the cell wall thus prevents cost-effective lignocellulosic ethanol production. Unfortunately, lignin provides compressive resistance to plant cells and cannot simply be genetically removed without incurring deleterious consequences on plant productivity. Lignin gives a strong structural support to the plant but also protects the plant against biotic and abiotic stress. Therefore, it is important to understand to which extent plant lignin content and composition can be modified in useful ways without deleterious consequences to plant growth and development.
Objectives
- Get better control of lignin distribution in the plant biomass to improve sugar recovery from plant cell wall.
- Create a “cleavable lignin”, less recalcitrant to pre-treatment, more suitable for a low cost of lignocellolusic-ethanol production, while keeping its biochemical and biophysical properties.
- Further understand how monolignols get exported out of the cell.
- Identification of oxidases involved in monolignol polymerization and cell wall cross-linking
