UGA discovery changes how scientists think about plant cell wall formation

Implications for biofuels

Athens, Ga. – University of Georgia researchers have discovered that two proteins come together in an unexpected way to make a carbohydrate, a chain of sugar molecules, in plant cell walls. This fundamental discovery changes the way scientists think about how plant cell walls are made and opens a new door to converting plants to biofuels and other carbon-based products.

In 2006, the UGA research team, led by Debra Mohnen, a faculty member in the UGA Complex Carbohydrate Research Center, discovered GAUT1, the first protein shown to synthesize pectin, a major component of the plant cell wall. Now Mohnen's team has shown that GAUT1 and a genetically similar protein called GAUT7, which does not appear to have pectin-synthesizing activity by itself, form a critical part of a pectin-synthesizing protein complex.

Moreover, the two-protein complex may serve as a "core" complex that associates with additional pectin-synthesizing proteins to form still larger carbohydrate-synthesizing complexes in the plant cells.

The findings signify a "critical step in changing our view of how the plant cell wall is made," said principal investigator Mohnen, a professor of biochemistry and molecular biology in the UGA Franklin College of Arts and Sciences. The study was published this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

NEF's new planting system speeds up miscanthus development

Energy crop developer New Energy Farms says it has developed a new system for establishing miscanthus that takes one-third the time of previous planting methods.

Paul Carver, NEF co-founder and CEO, who holds a PhD in miscanthus physiology and has been working with the crop for more than 15 years, said he believes the company can address the challenges that have been hindering the expansion of energy crops during the past decade. Of those barriers, establishment costs has been one of the most significant. “Grants and BCAP [Biomass Crop Assistance Program] won’t always be around—they are intended to start the market, not keep it going forever—so we’re very focused on providing systems that allow people to plant crops effectively without grant support,” Carver said. “It needs to end up being half the cost of what it is today.”

Carver said the new system, which he describes a second-generation method of planting energy crops, has three components. The first is a bulked up miscanthus breed that can reproduce rapidly. “The second part is development of uniform propagules that you can auto-drill with no hand labor,” Carver said.

Read full article here: http://biomassmagazine.com/articles/5957/nefs-new-planting-system-speeds-up-miscanthus-development/

Link to November issue of BioMass Magazine.

A Willow Energy Crop Information Resource at Cornell University

The Willowpedia web site hosted by the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences at Cornell University to support a community of knowledge surrounding the academic study and commercial use of shrub willow (Salix spp.) as a sustainable feedstock crop for bioenergy, biofuels, and bioproducts, as well as for environmental engineering and horticultural applications. While much of the information presented here is the result of work at Cornell, the intent of this site is to facilitate the global exchange of knowledge among the entire willow community and the public.

Link to Willowpedia: http://willow.cals.cornell.edu/index.html

Double chromosomes equals more plant power

By Karin Kloosterman

Biofuels are alternative energy fuels produced from living organisms or metabolic byproducts (organic or food waste products). If we could just find a more efficient way to unlock their energy, and to minimize the amount of land and water resources needed to grow them, they could replace the polluting and limited reserves of fossil fuels currently in use.Now "Kaiima Bio-Agritech" of Israel believes that it has found a way to do just that."The oil is going to end," Ariel Krolzig, product manager of Kaiima, tells ISRAEL21c. "It's a question of time. In the last few years no new oil fields have been found. Why are countries like Brazil looking for alternatives?" he asks rhetorically.Sporting a sage-like beard, Krolzig is standing beside the star of his likely success story, a castor oil plant. He proceeds to describe the method developed by Kaiima that doubles a plant's chromosomes from a set of two to a set of four.This doubling results in higher cell activity, increased photosynthesis and better adaptation to local conditions in the field. Most importantly, it more than doubles the plant's biofuel potential.

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Plant scientists reach for the skies with London rooftop experiments

Imperial College London news release

A futuristic £1 million rooftop 'greenhouse' which will enable central London scientists to grow large quantities of plants for experiments ranging from developing new sources of biofuels to helping sequence the tomato genome, has been built on top of a five storey building at Imperial College London.

The new Imperial GroDome is the only rooftop facility of its kind in London. It provides Imperial's plant scientists with over 200 square metres of temperature and light controlled growing space for a variety of plant species, allowing them to carry out large-scale plant experiments in an urban location for the first time.

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Understanding nature's role in a biofuel future

June 16, 2009

A US-Dutch collaboration has advanced the science of turning crops into energy. The EU-funded research, published in Nature Cell Biology, has added to the field of knowledge on cellulose, the molecule that plant cell walls are made from and the key to producing the energy-rich crops of the future.

The work, produced by scientists at the Wageningen University in the Netherlands and the Carnegie Institution for Science in the US, was funded in part by the 'New and Emerging Science and Technology' (NEST) activity of the European Union's Sixth Framework Programme (FP6).

Science's understanding of cellulose, how it forms and its underlying processes, is rather limited. Nevertheless, its potential to help develop renewable, plant-based biofuels is enormous. It is for this reason that the US-Dutch team targeted the fibrous molecule in their research, to bring research one step closer to new sources of energy.

'Cellulose is the most abundant reservoir of renewable hydrocarbons in the world,' explained David Ehrhardt of Carnegie Institution's Department of Plant Biology and co-author of the paper.

'To understand how cellulose might be modified and how plant development might be manipulated to improve crop plants as efficient sources of energy, we need to first understand the cellular processes that create cellulose and build cell walls,' he added.

As a starting point, the scientists used findings from a previous study (also undertaken by Professor Ehrhardt and the team), in which advanced imaging techniques were used to observe cellulose molecules within the Arabidopsis plant. In that study, the group created a fluorescent version of both the enzyme that makes cellulose fibres (cellulose synthase) and the protein behind microtubules (tubulin).

The results proved that a connection exists between cell wall synthesis and microtubules (protein fibres), and it is this connection that determines the shape of the cell. For the current study, the team turned their attention to how the association between the cellulose synthase complexes and microtubules is triggered.

They concluded that the protein network behind cellulose has a dual function; in addition to providing the framework for the structure of cell walls, it acts as a 'traffic cop', directing the important molecules that promote growth to the places they are needed. This means that we now know how the enzymes appear at the right position in the cell to create cellulose and ensure that the plant cells have the right shape.

The findings also helped the scientists to add a new layer of information to the processes at work in the movement of plant microtubules, which they refer to as 'treadmilling'.

They believe that the structures within the cell that contain cellulose synthase and that remain with the microtubules during longer, stressful periods are connected to this process, and it is only when the stress is lifted that the cellulose synthase is delivered by the organelles to the cell membrane.

For more information, please visit:
Carnegie Institution for Science: http://www.ciw.edu/
Wageningen University: http://www.wageningenuniversiteit.nl/UK/
Nature Cell Biology: http://www.nature.com/ncb
New and Emerging Science and Technology (NEST) under FP6: http://cordis.europa.eu/nest/

Donald Danforth Plant Science Center partners with private company

Catherine Wolf, KWMU (2009-06-12)

Roger Beachy, president of the Donald Danforth Plant Science Center, announced the center's first joint venture with a private company.

ST. LOUIS, MO (KWMU) -
For the first time, the non-profit Donald Danforth Plant Science Center in St. Louis is planning a joint venture with a private company. It's called Agrius BioForms.

The goal of the partnership with GeoSynFuels is to produce large amounts of enzymes in plants like soybeans. Enzymes break down biomass like switchgrass to turn it into biofuel.
Eliot Herman is a researcher who is working on the project. He said enzymes cost a lot to produce because they're made in factories, but growing mass amounts of them in soybeans could lower prices.

"All this is again about trying to reduce the cost to make biofuels work by making it cheaper. So the more we can produce and the smaller amount of mass, the smaller acerage, the lower the cost is."

Roger Beachy, the president of the Plant Science Center, said growing enzymes in soybeans could eventually provide Missouri farmers with an additional source of income.

"It's not that far out of line to think that these local producers will be the ones that produce the cheap ethanol using cheap enzymes."

Testing could take several years.

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