Fungi are able to grow on dead plant material but they utilize glucose as the preferential source of carbon. Here we report on the proteins that degrade plant cell walls and storage polysaccharides into metabolically active sugars such as glucose. These enzymes are essential for any process of biomass to biofuel conversion. Fungi and plant degrading bacteria produce a large number of functionally overlapping cellulases, hemicellulases and pectinases and encode them in a highly redundant gene complement. The reason for this genetic multiplicity and functional redundancy remains unknown, however the recalcitrance of biomass to decomposition is a well-known problem. We report on the main glucose master regulator SnfA and its relationship to glucose starvation, on the transcriptional control of pectin degradation to show narrow substrate regulated gene expression, and on a recent program of high-throughput heterologous protein expression/secretion of biomass degrading enzymes to analyze their catalytic activites and their combinatorial synergies.