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Wood decomposition by brown rot fungi


EMSL Project ID
50461

Abstract

Fungi dominate the biological decomposition of wood and other lignocellulosic plant tissues in nature through a range of pathways for unlocking the sugars embedded in lignin, offering a proven model for the sustainable production of energy from biomass. Modern approaches to bioenergy production aim to depolymerize polysaccharides to release fermentable sugars (saccharification), saving lignin as a co-product, a good fit for the carbohydrate-selective pathways of brown rot fungi. However, understanding of fungal brown rot metabolism is limited. To address key knowledge gaps brown rot-specific gene regulation patterns will be identified and characterized, enabling in vivo manipulations such as CRISPR/Cas9 and metabolomics to map metabolite expression feedback over time, producing an integrated regulatory model for brown rot fungi. This project will enable omics-driven tools for organisms highly relevant to bioenergy, with broader scientific impacts in the fields of ecology, evolution, and biogeochemistry. The lead institution is Univ. of Minnesota and this project is a collaboration with Clark University, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory and Joint Genome Institute (Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory).

Project Details

Start Date
2019-01-11
End Date
2021-09-30
Status
Closed

Team

Principal Investigator

Young-Mo Kim
Institution
Pacific Northwest National Laboratory

Team Members

Nathalie Munoz Munoz
Institution
Environmental Molecular Sciences Laboratory