Scientists have tried various chemical tricks because of their desire to be able to break down lignin more easily, and now a new study reports a critical progress in this area. Lignin keeps the plants upright, but it also makes it difficult for plants to decompose in industrial processes such as biofuel production or digestion alfalfa, and alfalfa is an important feed crop for cattle. Increasing the ability of lignin to be digested will reduce the amount of energy required in many processes; researchers around the world who are interested in improving the process have been confused about lignin, and they have tried countless ways to produce Having a weaker, more easily digested cell wall (containing lignin).Previous studies have suggested that the process by which lignin is assembled in a natural process, from a single molecular pool called a monomer, into a more complex chain of polymers can be designed to incorporate new ones that are not lignin Natural all the monomers. This method has aroused considerable interest, that is, lignin trunk and may increase its ability to degrade the monomer immersed together.
The enzyme called ferulic acid is particularly promising, although only in vitro. Now, a team of scientists led by Curtis Wilkerson has been genuinely successful with ferulicides in the body for the first time. In order to obtain the ferulic acid salt complexes in the live plant lignin, they must first determine that it has been added to the lignin biosynthetic pool.First, they found a gene encoding feruloinase. Then they were expressed in the lignin-forming tissues of poplar. Using lignin structure analysis, they observed that the poplar samples designed in this manner were able to produce new monomers that were used to deliver these monomers to the cell walls and eventually to absorb them into the lignin backbone. Under the greenhouse conditions, the resulting poplar does not show any difference in growth habits, but their lignin has shown improved ability to be digested. The design of plants that can use this compound when assembling lignin may be a new way to produce “specifically deconstructed” plants.