title: Engineering of plant cell walls for enhanced biofuel production.
abstract: The biomass of plants consists predominately of cell walls, a sophisticated composite material composed of various polymer networks including numerous polysaccharides and the polyphenol lignin. In order to utilize this renewable, highly abundant resource for the production of commodity chemicals such as biofuels, major hurdles have to be surpassed to reach economical viability. Recently, major advances in the basic understanding of the synthesis of the various wall polymers and its regulation has enabled strategies to alter the qualitative composition of wall materials. Such emerging strategies include a reduction/alteration of the lignin network to enhance polysaccharide accessibility, reduction of polymer derived processing inhibitors, and increases in polysaccharides with a high hexose/pentose ratio.
authors.affiliation: Joint BioEnergy Institute and Physical Biosciences Division, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley, CA 94702, USA.
authors.forename: Dominique
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Loqué
authors.affiliation: Joint BioEnergy Institute and Physical Biosciences Division, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley, CA 94702, USA; Department of Plant and Microbial Biology, University of California, Berkeley, Berkeley, CA 94702, USA.
authors.forename: Henrik V
authors.initials: HV
authors.lastname: Scheller
authors.affiliation: Department of Plant and Microbial Biology, University of California, Berkeley, Berkeley, CA 94702, USA. Electronic address: mpauly69@berkeley.edu.
authors.forename: Markus
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Pauly
mesh_terms: D056804:Biofuels; D018533:Biomass; D002473:Cell Wall / Q000737:chemistry*; D008031:Lignin / Q000378:metabolism; D060847:Metabolic Engineering; D059828:Plant Cells / Q000737:chemistry; D010944:Plants / Q000737:chemistry*; D011134:Polysaccharides / Q000378:metabolism
chemical_list: D056804:Biofuels; D011134:Polysaccharides; D008031:Lignin