Exploring the native cell wall nanoarchitecture of engineered bioenergy crops via multi-dimensional solid-state NMR.
EMSL Project ID
51332
Abstract
Carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, an inorganic carbon source, is fixed by plants via photosynthesis to form the polysaccharides and lignin that constitute the plant cell wall. The plant cell wall, which is the majority of plant biomass, is a promising, sustainable organic carbon source for the production of fuels, chemicals, and materials. All plant cells have a thin primary cell wall that expands as the cell grows. Only some cells, when they stop growing, make a thick secondary cell wall. The cell wall has many functions for the plant, including providing structural support and reducing herbivory. As a result, the structure is heterogenous, complex and highly recalcitrant, and it is challenging to effectively deconstruct the cell wall into simple units which can be economically converted into value-added biobased products. One approach is to engineer the plant cell wall to develop biomass crops with improved deconstruction properties in a biorefinery context. Understanding the biosynthesis and the architecture of plant cell wall will allow us to predict how any engineering strategies might affect the cell wall as a whole, and improve future engineering designs. While much progress has been made to understand how individual cell wall polymers are synthesized, how different cell wall components are assembled together to make a functional biomaterial remains poorly understood. Unfortunately, most cell wall analysis requires disruptive preparation methods, which make it extremely hard to reconstruct the native cell wall architecture. One promising exception to this is multi-dimensional solid state nuclear magnetic resonance (ssNMR) spectroscopy on never-dried plant tissue samples. Recent work has shown that ssNMR is an ideal tool for looking at intact primary and secondary cell wall. After successfully constructing a 13C plant growth chamber (Gao et al. submitted), 13C-labelled plant tissue can now be generated by our team. As part of a previous EMSL project (FY18-20), we have (1) analyzed sorghum (an annual grass and promising bioenergy crop) and generated a new model of cellulose-xylan interactions (Gao et al. in prep) and (2) tested the effect of cell wall engineering in the model plant Arabidopsis, well as sorghum. Here we wish to extend this work to analyze the cell wall of switchgrass (a native perennial grass) and poplar, both of which are key Department of Energy (DOE) biomass species. These plants have which has been engineered to have either (1) reduced pectin (2) or reduced lignin, properties which decrease recalcitrance and increase saccharification, as part of the DOE funded Center for Bioenergy Innovation (CBI) and the Joint Bioenergy Institute (JBEI) respectively. We expect that the results of this project will greatly enhance our understanding of cell wall architecture in these very different species, and that the knowledge will be used to predictably design future biomass crops.
Project Details
Project type
Large-Scale EMSL Research
Start Date
2020-10-01
End Date
2022-09-30
Status
Closed
Released Data Link
Team
Principal Investigator
Co-Investigator(s)
Team Members