Abstract
Plant biomass is a potential resource of chemicals, new materials and biofuels that could reduce our dependency on fossil carbon, thus decreasing the greenhouse effect. However, due to its chemical and structural complexity, plant biomass is recalcitrant to green biological transformation by enzymes, preventing the establishment of integrated bio-refineries. In order to gain more knowledge in the architecture of plant cell wall to facilitate their deconstruction, many fluorescent probes bearing various fluorophores have been devised and used successfully to reveal the changes in structural motifs during plant biomass deconstruction, and the molecular interactions between enzymes and plant cell wall polymers. Fluorescent probes are thus relevant tools to explore plant cell wall deconstruction.
Highlights
The plant cell wall (PCW) is the skeleton of plants: it helps maintaining rigidity against gravity or environmental elements, plasticity to permit plant growth, and protection against pathogens
The probability for a fluorophore to absorb a photon is called the extinction coefficient ε, which is at a maximum at λEX; The ratio between the number of fluorescence photons emitted to the number of absorbed photons is called quantum yield (QY or φ, comprised between 0 and 1), describing how efficient the fluorescence process is; The brightness of a fluorophore is defined by ε × QY which is a good indicator to compare different fluorophores; Fluorescence lifetime τ is the average duration in which the fluorophore remains in the excited state: when it returns to the ground state, it follows an exponential decay, in the order of ns
Calcofluor white binds cellulose but not with a high specificity compared to other plant polymers [34]; Congo red binds more strongly xyloglucan compared to cellulose and binds proteins [34]; Phloroglucinol stains lignin in red proportionally to the lignin content; Safranine binds lignified tissues in plants and wood, so its red fluorescence is a relevant sensor for differentiating cellulose-rich and lignin-rich cell walls [35]; Newly developed fluorophores exhibit spectral characteristics changes such as fluorescence emission increasing or shift when bound to some polysaccharides
Summary
The plant cell wall (PCW) is the skeleton of plants: it helps maintaining rigidity against gravity or environmental elements (such as wind, rain), plasticity to permit plant growth, and protection against pathogens. Even if the determination of PCW architecture at the molecular scale is the Holy Grail of scientists, global composition is commonly defined: lignocellulosic PCW is composed of different sugars (glucose, xylose, arabinose) and polyphenol molecules They can potentially be used as starting materials for transformation in many synthons and chemicals, by chemical reactions or biological reactions with enzymes or micro-organisms (such as fermentation). In order to facilitate this process, it has become essential to determine the limitations of enzymatic deconstruction of LC by increasing our knowledge regarding the architecture of LC at multiple scales To achieve this goal, the dynamics of enzymes and lignocellulose structure should be monitored during. A review of the fluorescent probes used in PCW together with the information obtained will show the advantages of such analysis
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