Engineering Plants for Biofuels
Date: 28.11.2012
With increasing demands for sustainable energy, being able to cost-efficiently produce biofuels from plant biomass is more important than ever. However, lignin and hemicelluloses present in certain plants mean that they cannot be easily converted into biofuels. A study published in journal Biotechnology for Biofuels appears to have solved this problem, using gene manipulation techniques to engineer plants that can be more easily broken down into biofuels.
In order to be useful for biofuel production, scientists need to be able to engineer plants with smaller amounts of xylan.
With this in mind, a research group used 3 mutant strains of Arabidopsis deficient in xylan -- irregular xylem (irx) mutants irx7, irx8 and irx9 -- in order to engineer plants with low xylan content and improved properties for easier breakdown of carbohydrate into simple sugars (saccharification).
Plants with up to 23% reduction in xylose levels and 18% reduction in lignin content were obtained, whilst normal xylem function was restored. The plants also showed a 42% increase in saccharification yield after pretreatment.
"This approach in Arabidopsis has the potential to be transferred to other biofuel crop species in the near future, in particular, the poplar species."
