Designer lignins: harnessing the plasticity of lignification.

Lignin is a complex polyphenolic constituent of plant secondary cell walls. Inspired largely by the recalcitrance of lignin to biomass processing, plant engineering efforts have routinely sought to alter lignin quantity, composition, and structure by exploiting the inherent plasticity of lignin biosynthesis. More recently, researchers are attempting to strategically design plants for increased degradability by incorporating monomers that lead to a lower degree of polymerisation, reduced hydrophobicity, fewer bonds to other cell wall constituents, or novel chemically labile linkages in the polymer backbone. In addition, the incorporation of value-added structures could help valorise lignin. Designer lignins may satisfy the biological requirement for lignification in plants while improving the overall efficiency of biomass utilisation.

• Publication year

  2016

• Venue

  Current Opinion in Biotechnology

• Publication date

  2016-02-01

• Fields of study

  Medicine, Materials Science, Chemistry, Environmental Science

• Identifiers
  DOI 10.1016/j.copbio.2015.10.009PMID 26775114
• External record

  Open on Semantic Scholar

• Source metadata

  Semantic Scholar, PubMed

• No claims are published for this paper.

• No concepts are published for this paper.

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