Improving plant cell walls for use as a renewable industrial feedstock

Partners

University of Newcastle upon Tyne

Dr David Bolam

Our main role is to assess a wide range of microbial carbohydrate binding modules (CBMs) for their ability to bind to plant cell wall material derived from biofuel-relevant crops such as Poplar and Brachypodium. Any CBMs that display binding will be cloned into plant expression vectors either alone, or fused to the genes encoding different microbial plant cell wall degrading enzymes. These constructs will be passed on to other Renewall partners to express in plants and determine the CBM or CBM-enzyme fusion’s ability to enhance the digestibility of the plant hemicellulosic material.

Structure of CBM15 Figure shows the structure of a xylan binding CBM from family 15 in complex with xylopentaose (blue).

CBM binding in planta Idirect immunofluorescence microscopy of microbial CBMs from different families binding to secondary cell walls of vascular tissues in transverse sections of tobacco, pea, and flax stems. Binding to phloem sclerenchyma fibers is indicated by arrows. X, binding to secondary cell walls of xylem vessels. Scale bars, 100 μm.