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ARS Home » Pacific West Area » Albany, California » Western Regional Research Center » Bioproducts Research » Research » Publications at this Location » Publication #275448
Title: Plant cell walls to ethanol.

Author
item Jordan, Douglas
item Bowman, Michael
item Braker, Jay
item Dien, Bruce
item Hector, Ronald - Ron
item Lee, Charles
item Mertens, Jeffrey
item Wagschal, Kurt

Submitted to: Biochemical Journal
Publication Type: Peer Reviewed Journal
Publication Acceptance Date: 11/27/2011
Publication Date: 3/1/2012
Citation: Jordan, D.B., Bowman, M.J., Braker, J.D., Dien, B.S., Hector, R.E., Lee, C.C., Mertens, J.A., Wagschal, K.C. 2012. Plant cell walls to ethanol. Biochemical Journal. 442:247-252.

Interpretive Summary: Conversion of plant cell walls to ethanol is a multi-step process (pretreatment, enzymatic hydrolysis, and fermentation) in which each stage presents a multitude of challenges. This paper describes the key hurdles that must be surpassed and presents new data that illustrates some of the various problems.

Technical Abstract: Conversion of plant cell walls to ethanol constitutes generation 2 bioethanol production. The process consists of several steps: biomass selection/genetic modification, physiochemical pretreatment, enzymatic saccharification, fermentation, and separation. Ultimately, it is desired to combine as many of the biochemical steps as possible in a single organism to achieve consolidated bioprocessing (CBP). A commercially-ready CBP organism is currently unreported. Production of generation 2 bioethanol is hindered by economics, particularly in the cost of pretreatment (including waste management and solvent recovery), the cost of saccharification enzymes (particularly exocellulases and endocellulases displaying kcat ~1 s-1 on crystalline cellulose), and the inefficiency of cofermentation of five and six carbon monosaccharides (owing in part to redox cofactor imbalances in Saccharomyces cerevisiae).