Ectopic callose deposition into woody biomass modulates the nano-architecture of macrofibrils.

Plant biomass plays an increasingly important role in the circular bioeconomy, replacing non-renewable fossil resources. Genetic engineering of this lignocellulosic biomass could benefit biorefinery transformation chains by lowering economic and technological barriers to industrial processing. However, previous efforts have mostly targeted the major constituents of woody biomass: cellulose, hemicellulose and lignin. Here we report the engineering of wood structure through the introduction of callose, a polysaccharide novel to most secondary cell walls. Our multiscale analysis of genetically engineered poplar trees shows that callose deposition modulates cell wall porosity, water and lignin contents and increases the lignin-cellulose distance, ultimately resulting in substantially decreased biomass recalcitrance. We provide a model of the wood cell wall nano-architecture engineered to accommodate the hydrated callose inclusions. Ectopic polymer introduction into biomass manifests in new physico-chemical properties and offers new avenues when considering lignocellulose engineering.

Eudicot primary cell wall glucomannan is related in synthesis, structure, and function to xyloglucan.

Hemicellulose polysaccharides influence assembly and properties of the plant primary cell wall (PCW), perhaps by interacting with cellulose to affect the deposition and bundling of cellulose fibrils. However, the functional differences between plant cell wall hemicelluloses such as glucomannan, xylan, and xyloglucan (XyG) remain unclear. As the most abundant hemicellulose, XyG is considered important in eudicot PCWs, but plants devoid of XyG show relatively mild phenotypes. We report here that a patterned ß-galactoglucomannan (ß-GGM) is widespread in eudicot PCWs and shows remarkable similarities to XyG. The sugar linkages forming the backbone and side chains of ß-GGM are analogous to those that make up XyG, and moreover, these linkages are formed by glycosyltransferases from the same CAZy families. Solid-state nuclear magnetic resonance indicated that ß-GGM shows low mobility in the cell wall, consistent with interaction with cellulose. Although Arabidopsis ß-GGM synthesis mutants show no obvious growth defects, genetic crosses between ß-GGM and XyG mutants produce exacerbated phenotypes compared with XyG mutants. These findings demonstrate a related role of these two similar but distinct classes of hemicelluloses in PCWs. This work opens avenues to study the roles of ß-GGM and XyG in PCWs.

Importance of Water in Maintaining Softwood Secondary Cell Wall Nanostructure.

Water is one of the principal constituents by mass of living plant cell walls. However, its role and interactions with secondary cell wall polysaccharides and the impact of dehydration and subsequent rehydration on the molecular architecture are still to be elucidated. This work combines multidimensional solid-state 13C magic-angle-spinning (MAS) nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) with molecular dynamics modeling to decipher the role of water in the molecular architecture of softwood secondary cell walls. The proximities between all main polymers, their molecular conformations, and interaction energies are compared in never-dried, oven-dried, and rehydrated states. Water is shown to play a critical role at the hemicellulose-cellulose interface. After significant molecular shrinkage caused by dehydration, the original molecular conformation is not fully recovered after rehydration. The changes include xylan becoming more closely and irreversibly associated with cellulose and some mannan becoming more mobile and changing conformation. These irreversible nanostructural changes provide a basis for explaining and improving the properties of wood-based materials.

1H CSA parameters by ultrafast MAS NMR: Measurement and applications to structure refinement.

A 1H anisotropic-isotropic chemical shift correlation experiment which employs symmetry-based recoupling sequences to reintroduce the chemical shift anisotropy in ν1 and ultrafast MAS to resolve 1H sites in ν2 is described. This experiment is used to measure 1H shift parameters for L-ascorbic acid, a compound with a relatively complex hydrogen-bonding network in the solid. The 1H CSAs of hydrogen-bonded sites with resolved isotropic shifts can be extracted directly from the recoupled lineshapes. In combination with DFT calculations, hydrogen positions in crystal structures obtained from X-ray and neutron diffraction are refined by comparison with simulations of the full two-dimensional NMR spectrum. The improved resolution afforded by the second dimension allows even unresolved hydrogen-bonded sites 1H to be assigned and their shift parameters to be obtained.