Abstract
Wood is a renewable resource that is mainly composed of lignin and cell wall polysaccharides. The polysaccharide fraction is valuable as it can be converted into pulp and paper, or into fermentable sugars. On the other hand, the lignin fraction is increasingly being considered a valuable source of aromatic building blocks for the chemical industry. The presence of lignin in wood is one of the major recalcitrance factors in woody biomass processing, necessitating the need for harsh chemical treatments to degrade and extract it prior to the valorization of the cell wall polysaccharides, cellulose and hemicellulose. Over the past years, large research efforts have been devoted to engineering lignin amount and composition to reduce biomass recalcitrance toward chemical processing. We review the efforts made in forest trees, and compare results from greenhouse and field trials. Furthermore, we address the value and potential of CRISPR-based gene editing in lignin engineering and its integration in tree breeding programs.
Highlights
Fossil resources are the main feedstock for energy and organic compounds, and their use results in the emission of greenhouse gases associated with climate change
The coming climate crash calls for an urgent transition from a fossil-based to a bio-based economy in which lignocellulosic biomass rather than oil is used for the production of fuels, chemicals and materials
Wood is an important source of lignocellulosic biomass; it is mainly composed of secondary-thickened cell walls rich in cellulose, hemicelluloses, and lignin
Summary
Fossil resources are the main feedstock for energy and organic compounds, and their use results in the emission of greenhouse gases associated with climate change. The incorporation of ferulic acid in CCR-deficient trees results in the formation of acetal bonds in the lignin polymer, which are cleaved in acidic biomass pretreatments (Leplé et al, 2007; Ralph et al, 2008; Van Acker et al, 2014).
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