Insights into plant cell wall structure, architecture, and integrity using glycome profiling of native and AFEXTM-pre-treated biomass.
Cell walls, which constitute the bulk of plant biomass, vary considerably in their structure, composition, and architecture. Studies on plant cell walls can be conducted on both native and pre-treated plant biomass samples, allowing an enhanced understanding of these structural and compositional variations. Here glycome profiling was employed to determine the relative abundance of matrix polysaccharides in several phylogenetically distinct native and pre-treated plant biomasses. Eight distinct biomass types belonging to four different subgroups (i.e. monocot grasses, woody dicots, herbaceous dicots, and softwoods) were subjected to various regimes of AFEX™ (ammonia fiber expansion) pre-treatment [AFEX is a trademark of MBI, Lansing (http://www.mbi.org]. This approach allowed detailed analysis of close to 200 cell wall glycan epitopes and their relative extractability using a high-throughput platform. In general, irrespective of the phylogenetic origin, AFEX™ pre-treatment appeared to cause loosening and improved accessibility of various xylan epitope subclasses in most plant biomass materials studied. For most biomass types analysed, such loosening was also evident for other major non-cellulosic components including subclasses of pectin and xyloglucan epitopes. The studies also demonstrate that AFEX™ pre-treatment significantly reduced cell wall recalcitrance among diverse phylogenies (except softwoods) by inducing structural modifications to polysaccharides that were not detectable by conventional gross composition analyses. It was found that monitoring changes in cell wall glycan compositions and their relative extractability for untreated and pre-treated plant biomass can provide an improved understanding of variations in structure and composition of plant cell walls and delineate the role(s) of matrix polysaccharides in cell wall recalcitrance.
Complex Carbohydrate Research Center, University of Georgia, Athens, GA 30602, USA BioEnergy Science Center, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Oak Ridge, TN 37831, USA siva@ccrc.uga.edu shishir.chundawat@rutgers.edu.
Sivakumar
S
Pattathil
Complex Carbohydrate Research Center, University of Georgia, Athens, GA 30602, USA BioEnergy Science Center, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Oak Ridge, TN 37831, USA.
Michael G
MG
Hahn
DOE Great Lakes Bioenergy Research Center, Department of Chemical Engineering and Materials Science, Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI 48824, USA.
Bruce E
BE
Dale
DOE Great Lakes Bioenergy Research Center, Department of Chemical Engineering and Materials Science, Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI 48824, USA Present address: Department of Chemical and Biochemical Engineering, C-150A Engineering Building, Rutgers The State University of New Jersey, Piscataway, NJ 08854, USA siva@ccrc.uga.edu shishir.chundawat@rutgers.edu.
Shishir P S
SP
Chundawat
D018533:Biomass; D002241:Carbohydrates / Q000737:chemistry*; D002473:Cell Wall / Q000737:chemistry*; D032107:Populus
D002241:Carbohydrates
AFEX; biofuels; cell walls; glycome profiling; plant biomass; recalcitrance.