Elucidating temporal-spatial patterns in lignocellulose degradation by morphologically distinct anaerobe gut fungi
EMSL Project ID
60413
Abstract
Novel mechanisms to directly disassemble raw, untreated lignocellulose, and dispense the need for pre-treatments are essential to advance biotechnology based on lignocellulose conversion into simple sugars. Here we propose to generate insight in such novel degradative mechanisms, via investigation of the powerful ability of anaerobic gut fungi (AGF) to degrade crude lignocellulose, in the form of the biofuel feedstock wheat straw. This proposed research is central to the BER mission area of characterising biological processes relevant to production of biofuels and biomaterials.
AGF powerful ability to disrupt lignocellulose is generally attributed to a combination of their abundant degradative enzyme complexes and morphological structures - rhizoids - that penetrate lignocellulose. Despite recent progress in identifying the degradative enzymes, we have a desperately inadequate understanding of how the fungus and its enzymes affect the actual substrate. Knowledge is lacking on what architectural and compositional changes are achieved in the lignocellulose during its degradation, and what the constraints for degradation are. Furthermore, we don't yet understand the contribution of fungal morphological structures to lignocellulose degradation.
Our preliminary work demonstrates that fungal species with and without rhizoids have a strikingly different effect on cellulose and wheat straw. We therefore hypothesize that fungi with these morphotypes will leverage distinct degradative mechanisms, which may involve different adaptations of their enzyme production or morphological structures in response to signals reflecting composition and structure of the plant biomass. Together this may result in distinct differences in the alterations that these fungi can bring about in the lignocellulose structure.
Here, this will be tested via assessment of spatial-temporal patterns in chemical and structural changes brought about by the fungi in lignocellulose. This will be achieved via detailed analysis of lignocellulose via ssNMR, XRD and surface-sensitive chemical imaging (via EMSL), combined with immunohistochemistry and fiber analysis (at PI institute). Interpretation of these experiments will be aided via a complementary experiment that determines the spatial-temporal enzyme production in fungi from different morphological types via time-stage transcriptomics, proteomics and FISH (via EMSL and JGI).
Taken together this work provides insight in the degradative mechanisms leveraged by morphologically distinct types of AGF, and their effects on the biofuel feedstock wheat straw during its degradation. This will eventually contribute to exploitation of these mechanisms in renewables-based biotechnology.
Project Details
Project type
FICUS Research
Start Date
2022-10-01
End Date
N/A
Status
Active
Released Data Link
Team
Principal Investigator
Team Members