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      Roles of pectin in biomass yield and processing for biofuels

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          Abstract

          Pectin is a component of the cell walls of plants that is composed of acidic sugar-containing backbones with neutral sugar-containing side chains. It functions in cell adhesion and wall hydration, and pectin crosslinking influences wall porosity and plant morphogenesis. Despite its low abundance in the secondary cell walls that make up the majority of lignocellulosic biomass, recent results have indicated that pectin influences secondary wall formation in addition to its roles in primary wall biosynthesis and modification. This mini-review will examine these and other recent results in the context of biomass yield and digestibility and discuss how these traits might be enhanced by the genetic and molecular modification of pectin. The utility of pectin as a high-value, renewable biomass co-product will also be highlighted.

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          Most cited references66

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          Feedstocks for lignocellulosic biofuels.

          In 2008, the world produced approximately 87 gigaliters of liquid biofuels, which is roughly equal to the volume of liquid fuel consumed by Germany that year. Essentially, all of this biofuel was produced from crops developed for food production, raising concerns about the net energy and greenhouse gas effects and potential competition between use of land for production of fuels, food, animal feed, fiber, and ecosystem services. The pending implementation of improved technologies to more effectively convert the nonedible parts of plants (lignocellulose) to liquid fuels opens diverse options to use biofuel feedstocks that reach beyond current crops and the land currently used for food and feed. However, there has been relatively little discussion of what types of plants may be useful as bioenergy crops.
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            Pectin methylesterases: cell wall enzymes with important roles in plant physiology.

            Pectin methylesterases catalyse the demethylesterification of cell wall polygalacturonans. In dicot plants, these ubiquitous cell wall enzymes are involved in important developmental processes including cellular adhesion and stem elongation. Here, I highlight recent studies that challenge the accepted views of the mechanism and function of pectin methylesterases, including the co-secretion of pectins and pectin methylesterases into the apoplasm, new action patterns of mature pectin methylesterases and a possible function of the pro regions of pectin methylesterases as intramolecular chaperones.
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              Pectin-induced changes in cell wall mechanics underlie organ initiation in Arabidopsis.

              Tissue mechanics have been shown to play a key role in the regulation of morphogenesis in animals [1-4] and may have an equally important role in plants [5-9]. The aerial organs of plants are formed at the shoot apical meristem following a specific phyllotactic pattern [10]. The initiation of an organ from the meristem requires a highly localized irreversible surface deformation, which depends on the demethylesterification of cell wall pectins [11]. Here, we used atomic force microscopy (AFM) to investigate whether these chemical changes lead to changes in tissue mechanics. By mapping the viscoelasticity and elasticity in living meristems, we observed increases in tissue elasticity, correlated with pectin demethylesterification, in primordia and at the site of incipient organs. Measurements of tissue elasticity at various depths showed that, at the site of incipient primordia, the first increases occurred in subepidermal tissues. The results support the following causal sequence of events: (1) demethylesterification of pectin is triggered in subepidermal tissue layers, (2) this contributes to an increase in elasticity of these layers-the first observable mechanical event in organ initiation, and (3) the process propagates to the epidermis during the outgrowth of the organ. Copyright © 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
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                Author and article information

                Journal
                Front Plant Sci
                Front Plant Sci
                Front. Plant Sci.
                Frontiers in Plant Science
                Frontiers Media S.A.
                1664-462X
                27 March 2013
                2013
                : 4
                : 67
                Affiliations
                [1] 1Department of Biology, The Pennsylvania State University University Park, PA, USA
                [2] 2Center for Lignocellulose Structure and Formation, The Pennsylvania State University University Park, PA, USA
                Author notes

                Edited by: Samuel P. Hazen, University of Massachusetts, USA

                Reviewed by: Henrik Scheller, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, USA; Herman Höfte, Institut National de la Recherche Agronomique, France

                *Correspondence: Charles T. Anderson, Department of Biology, The Pennsylvania State University, 201 Huck Life Sciences Building, University Park, PA 16802, USA. e-mail: cta3@ 123456psu.edu

                This article was submitted to Frontiers in Plant Biotechnology, a specialty of Frontiers in Plant Science.

                Article
                10.3389/fpls.2013.00067
                3608898
                23543255
                8d1d433b-6266-4e0c-ab6d-92e3c50394e2
                Copyright © Xiao and Anderson.

                This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in other forums, provided the original authors and source are credited and subject to any copyright notices concerning any third-party graphics etc.

                History
                : 14 January 2013
                : 10 March 2013
                Page count
                Figures: 1, Tables: 0, Equations: 0, References: 89, Pages: 7, Words: 0
                Categories
                Plant Science
                Mini Review Article

                Plant science & Botany
                biomass,cell adhesion,cell wall,gelling,lignocellulosic biofuel,pectin
                Plant science & Botany
                biomass, cell adhesion, cell wall, gelling, lignocellulosic biofuel, pectin

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