Initial Rhodonia placenta Gene Expression in Acetylated Wood: Group-Wise Upregulation of Non-Enzymatic Oxidative Wood Degradation Genes Depending on the Treatment Level

Martina Kölle,Annica Pilgård,Rebecka Ringman

doi:10.3390/f10121117

Martina Kölle, Annica Pilgård + Show 1 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.3390/f10121117

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Abstract

Acetylation has been shown to delay fungal decay, but the underlying mechanisms are poorly understood. Brown-rot fungi, such as Rhodonia placenta (Fr.) Niemelä, K.H. Larss. & Schigel, degrade wood in two steps, i.e., oxidative depolymerization followed by secretion of hydrolytic enzymes. Since separating the two degradation steps has been proven challenging, a new sample design was applied to the task. The aim of this study was to compare the expression of 10 genes during the initial decay phase in wood and wood acetylated to three different weight percentage gains (WPG). The results showed that not all genes thought to play a role in initiating brown-rot decay are upregulated. Furthermore, the results indicate that R. placenta upregulates an increasing number of genes involved in the oxidative degradation phase with increasing WPG.

Highlights

Wood is an attractive building material that is biodegradable, renewable, stores carbon [1,2], and can serve as an alternative to concrete and steel due to its mechanical properties [3,4]
R. placenta during the non-enzymatic oxidative degradation phase, when grown on wafers of untreated wood and wood acetylated to three different levels
The results of this study show that R. placenta upregulates parts of the genes involved in non-enzymatic oxidative degradation when growing on acetylated samples as compared with untreated wood, especially on higher levels of acetylation

Summary

Introduction

Wood is an attractive building material that is biodegradable, renewable, stores carbon [1,2], and can serve as an alternative to concrete and steel due to its mechanical properties [3,4]. Biodegradability is a disadvantage when wood is used in outdoor construction [5,6], if no adequate preservative method is applied. An alternative approach to traditional preservatives is wood modification, which alters the properties of the wood to enhance its resistance to degradation [8]. Acetylation is a widely studied wood modification method [8,10,11,12,13]. That a weight percent gain (WPG) of 10% leads to limited decay inhibition, whereas a WPG of 20% significantly increases decay resistance [8,17,18,19,20]

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