Break down the walls

摘要

Plants are increasingly being used as raw materials in the production of ethanol and other liquid biofuels. But the poor accessibility of sugars embedded in plant cell walls - known as recalcitrance - is a major barrier to economically viable implementation of these technologies1. Although recalcitrance is an inherent property of plant cell walls, different microorganisms use different enzymes to degrade the walls, and a lack of understanding of these interactions has limited the design of plants that have reduced recalcitrance. Writing in Science, Ding et al.