17-05: Understanding enzyme specificity holds the key to biorefineries

A biomass agnostic approach is preferable for the development of biorefinery processes as this broadens the options for lignocellulosic biomass procurement. Plant cell wall composition varies however, considerable between species and between different organs and tissues. This is reflected in significant differences in how efficient the sugars are released by enzymatic saccharification. From work on plant cell wall mutants, we are improving our understanding of how the sugars are locked away in the polymers of the cell wall and of the function of the different polymers. The altered cell walls are in other words providing us with a higher resolution map of the cell wall and are elucidating details of the molecular environment in which the enzymes must work during saccharification of lignocellulose. The mutants provide excellent materials for indebt investigation of the substrate specificity of enzymes and can thus provide valuable information about the consortia of enzymes which are required for efficient decomposition of any particular plant based material. Highly sensitive analytical methods for the detection and identification of sugar oligomers have been developed as a foundation for the described work and these methods will be discussed.