Directed plant cell-wall accumulation of iron: embedding co-catalyst for efficient biomass conversion.

ABSTRACT:

Background

Plant lignocellulosic biomass is an abundant, renewable feedstock for the production of biobased fuels and chemicals. Previously, we showed that iron can act as a co-catalyst to improve the deconstruction of lignocellulosic biomass. However, directly adding iron catalysts into biomass prior to pretreatment is diffusion limited, and increases the cost of biorefinery operations. Recently, we developed a new strategy for expressing iron-storage protein ferritin intracellularly to accumulate iron as a catalyst for the downstream deconstruction of lignocellulosic biomass. In this study, we extend this approach by fusing the heterologous ferritin gene with a signal peptide for secretion into Arabidopsis cell walls (referred to here as FerEX).

Results

The transgen

SUBMITTER: Lin CY 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5073452 | biostudies-literature | 2016

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature