Abatement of microfibre pollution and detoxification of textile dye – Indigo by engineered plant enzymes

Microfibres (diameter <5 mm) and textile dyes released from textile industries are ubiquitous, cause environmental pollution, and harm aquatic flora, fauna, animals and human life. Therefore, enzymatic abatement of microfibre pollution and textile dye detoxification is essential. Microbial enzymes for such application present major challenges of scale and affordability to clean up large scale pollution. Therefore, enzymes required for the biodegradation of microfibres and indigo dye were expressed in transplastomic tobacco plants through chloroplast genetic engineering. Integration of laccase and lignin peroxidase genes into the tobacco chloroplast genomes and homoplasmy was confirmed by Southern blots. Decolorization (up to 86%) of samples containing indigo dye (100 mg/L) was obtained using cp-laccase (0.5% plant enzyme powder). Significant (8-fold) reduction in commercial microbial cellulase cocktail was achieved in pretreated cotton fibre hydrolysis by supplementing cost effective cellulases (endoglucanases, ß-glucosidases) and accessory enzymes (swollenin, xylanase, lipase) and ligninases (laccase lignin peroxidase) expressed in chloroplasts. Microfibre hydrolysis using cocktail of Cp-cellulases and Cp-accessory enzymes along with minimal dose (0.25% and 0.5%) of commercial cellulase blend (Ctec2) showed 88%–89% of sugar release from pretreated cotton and microfibres. Cp-ligninases, Cp-cellulases and Cp-accessory enzymes were stable in freeze dried leaves up to 15 and 36 months respectively at room temperature, when protected from light. Use of plant powder for decolorization or hydrolysis eliminated the need for preservatives, purification or concentration or cold chain. Evidently, abatement of microfibre pollution and textile dye detoxification using Cp-enzymes is a novel and cost-effective approach to prevent their environmental pollution.     

Wood Decomposition Following a Perennial Lupine Die-Off: A 3-Year Litterbag Study

Woody debris is a conspicuous feature of many ecosystems and can be a large pool of stored carbon and nutrients. In the California coastal prairie, yellow bush lupines (Lupinus arboreus) experience mass die-offs, producing large quantities of woody detritus. Live lupines are fed upon by the stem-boring caterpillars of the ghost moth, Hepialus californicus, and outbreaks of ghost moths are one factor contributing to lupine die-offs. A common detritivore, the terrestrial isopod Porcellio scaber, frequently inhabits ghost moth tunnels in lupine wood. We used a litterbag experiment to test the hypothesis that H. californicus increases decomposition of woody lupine detritus by facilitating its use by P. scaber. Isopod access to wood was crossed with simulated ghost moth boring to measure the independent and interactive effects of these two arthropods on total mass loss, as well as on carbon, nitrogen, and lignin dynamics. Isopods initially colonized litterbags but were not more abundant on L. arboreus logs that had simulated ghost moth boring than on logs without boring. They were rare in litterbags collected at 12 months or later and had no effect on wood decomposition. Simulated ghost moth boring increased wood decomposition (P = 0.0021), from 50.5 to 55.1% mass loss after 3 years. This effect was likely due to increased surface area for microbial utilization of the wood. Lupine wood had an initial lignin content of 14.70 ± 0.67%, but lignin did not appear to decompose during the 3 years of this study, and by the end of the experiment accounted for 32.6 ± 1.12% of the remaining wood. Neither ghost moth boring nor isopod access affected lignin loss. Lupine wood from a die-off in 2002 was estimated to have contained three times more nitrogen per unit area than the yearly input of annual grass litter. The slow decomposition of lupine wood, however, restricts the rate at which nitrogen is released into the soil and results in the storage of carbon and nutrients in lupine wood for several years following such die-offs.     

Assessing changes in the surface area of the non-cellulose fraction of lignocellulosics

Cholic acid, which preferentially associates with the non- cellulose component of lignocellulosics, is used as a probe to monitor changes in the relative surface area of this fraction of lignocellulosic biomass-to-ethanol substrates. The method is experimentally demonstrated in a traditional enzyme-catalyzed lignocellulosic saccharification experiment.     

Flexible and digestible wood caused by viral-induced alteration of cell wall composition

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微生物降解秸秆木质素的研究进展

我国秸秆资源丰富，每年产生逾8亿t作物秸秆。通过秸秆直接还田或肥料化还田不仅可以减少化肥的施用量，缓解农业污染压力，还能实现农作物秸秆的循环利用。木质素结构复杂，且与纤维素和半纤维素相互缠绕，因此秸秆的自然腐解过程中，木质素是主要的限速因子，为了提高降解效率，木质素降解菌的发掘和降解机制也逐渐成为研究热点。本文综述了降解木质素的真菌和细菌的研究现状，对比其真菌和细菌降解特性的优缺点并分析复合降解菌群的优势。随后对木质素降解酶系的酶学性质、在不同微生物中的表达特性进行总结，对木质素降解机制及衍生芳烃代谢路径的研究进展进行综述。最后整理木质素降解微生物在秸秆肥料化技术中的应用进展，并探讨了微生物降解秸秆木质素的应用前景和未来的研究方向。     

Tree-ring δ2H records of lignin methoxy indicate spring temperature changes since 20th century in the Qinling Mountains,China

Stable hydrogen isotope ratios of wood lignin methoxy groups (δ²H_LM values) of mid-latitude forests are increasingly applied to reconstruct δ²H patterns in precipitation of regional to sub-continental scales. To date, the knowledge about the effect of topographic factors on δ²H_LM values is still scare, especially in the biogeographic boundary. We measured tree-ring δ²H_LM chronologies (1901–2018) from two typical conifer species at three sites with different altitudes of a north-ridge-south transect of the Qinling Mountains (central China), where covers the climate transition zone from warm temperate to subtropics. The δ²H_LM chronologies of the north and the south slopes were characterized by a decreasing trend between 1901 and 1955, which turned into a positive trend after 1955. In contrast, the mountain ridge site located at the highest altitude showed continuous increasing δ²H_LM values over the entire period from 1901 to 2018. The highest correlations between temperature and δ²H_LM chronologies were found for the northern slope and the mountain ridge region spring temperatures (March–May). The observed abrupt changes in the δ²H_LM values since the 1950s at lower elevation sites might reveal slope-related moisture effects which superimpose local temperature patterns. During the rapidly warming period 1955–2018, the higher correlations of the δ²H_LM chronologies with the spring and mean annual (previous November to current October) temperatures were detected on the warmer northern slope. In summary, although the variations of measured δ²H_LM of the three investigated sites reflect geographic-specific hydrological characteristics, the low-frequency temperature changes are documented in the δ²H_LM values.     

Histochemical Probing of Potato Periderm with Neutral Red: A Sensitive Cytofluorochrome for the Hydrophobic Domain of Suberin

A technique is described which uses the lipid fluorochrome neutral red as a cytochemical probe to detect the hydrophobic domain of the lignosuberin matrix in native and wound periderm of potato tuber. Toluidine blue O is used as a counterstain to quench autofluorescence. The neutral red technique appears to be specific for the hydrophobic/lipid domain of suberin and is significantly more sensitive than Sudan III and IV. The fluorochrome was extensively used on paraffin-embedded tissue with excellent results but also worked on freehand sections of fresh periderm tissue. In tuber tissue undergoing wound-healing, the pattern of suberin fluorescence obtained with the neutral red probe was identical in specificity to the color pattern obtained with Sudan III/IV, but somewhat different than that observed when berberine was used. Results obtained with the neutral red probe and berberine probe visually demonstrated that during ligno-suberin biosynthesis, the depositions of hydrophobic/lipid and phenolic/lignin-like components in potato tuber periderm were separate processes. The deposition of these components does not necessarily require their simultaneous presence because the fluorescence from these probes showed that the components were not consistently present together on the cell walls.     

Ferulate–coniferyl alcohol cross-coupled products formed by radical coupling reactions

Radical coupling reactions between ethyl ferulate (Et-FA), a simple model for feruloyl polysaccharides in planta, and coniferyl alcohol (CA), a monolignol, were studied in order to better understand the polymer cross-coupling interactions among polysaccharides and monolignols or lignin, mediated by ferulate (FA), in plant cell walls. Cross-coupled FA/CA dimers produced in an aqueous buffer (pH 5.0) containing peroxidase/hydrogen peroxide were isolated and characterized by NMR. The total coupling products were characterized by 2D ¹³C–¹H correlation (HSQC) NMR spectroscopy and GC–MS. Results from this study showed that ferulate readily cross-couples with coniferyl alcohol through free radical coupling mechanisms producing a series of cross-coupled FA/CA dimers with β-O-4-, β-5-/8-5-, and 8-β-linkages; the syntheses and isolation of β-5- and 8-5-cross-coupled dimers are reported here. The transformation from 8-β-coupled FA/CA hydroxyl esters into lactones through intramolecular transesterification is demonstrated for the first time and mechanisms behind these transformations are discussed. The finding of both β-5- and 8-5-cross-coupled dimers in this study suggests that analogs of both may be present in plant cell walls. Finally it is suggested that ferulates in plants indeed react with monolignols through free radical mechanisms producing a more diverse array of cross-coupled dimers than previously reported.