Brachypodium cell wall mutant with enhanced saccharification potential despite increased lignin content - INRAE - Institut national de recherche pour l’agriculture, l’alimentation et l’environnement
Journal Articles BioEnergy Research Year : 2015

Brachypodium cell wall mutant with enhanced saccharification potential despite increased lignin content

Richard Sibout
Laurent Cezard
  • Function : Author
  • PersonId : 1204233
Catherine Lapierre
  • Function : Author
  • PersonId : 1112572
Samantha Vernhettes
Herman Höfte

Abstract

Plant lignocellulosic biomass, mostly composed of cell walls, is one of the largest, mostly untapped, reserves of renewable carbon feedstock on the planet. Energy-rich polysaccharide polymers of plant cell walls can be broken down to produce fermentable sugars used to produce bioethanol. However, the complex structure of plant cell walls, and in particular, the presence of lignin, makes them recalcitrant to enzymatic degradation. Reducing this recalcitrance represents a major technological challenge. Brachypodium distachyon is an excellent model to identify parameters underlying biomass quality of energy grasses. In this work, we identified a mutant line spa1 with a so far undescribed phenotype combining brittleness with increased elasticity of the internodes. Mutant cell walls contain less crystalline cellulose and changes in hemicellulose and lignin quality and quantity. Using a dedicated reactor to follow in real-time, the evolution of straw particle size and sugar release during enzymatic digestion, we show that, despite the increased lignin content, the spa1 mutant has a dramatic reduced recalcitrance to saccharification compared to the WT. These observations demonstrate that other parameters besides lignin content are relevant for the improvement of biomass recalcitrance in energy grasses.

Domains

Vegetal Biology
No file

Dates and versions

hal-01123292 , version 1 (04-03-2015)

Identifiers

Cite

Hélène Timpano, Richard Sibout, Marie Francoise Devaux, Camille Alvarado, Rachelle Looten, et al.. Brachypodium cell wall mutant with enhanced saccharification potential despite increased lignin content. BioEnergy Research, 2015, 8 (1), pp.1-15. ⟨10.1007/s12155-014-9501-1⟩. ⟨hal-01123292⟩
232 View
0 Download

Altmetric

Share

More