Early-branching gut fungi possess a large, comprehensive array of biomass-degrading enzymes
Abstract
The recalcitrance of plant biomass remains a formidable bottleneck in the production of biofuels and other chemicals from renewable sources. Enzymes from microbial communities found within ruminants and hindgut fermenters, however, show considerable promise to break down plant material into simple sugars efficiently. Solomon et al. used 'omics-level and biochemical assays to reveal a suite of lignocellulose-degrading enzymes from early-diverging anaerobic fungi isolated from the guts of horses, goats, and sheep. This approach not only reveals the regulation of these pathways but also represents a method to identify enzymes with no known homologs that would be unidentifiable using conventional screening methods.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Pub Defense Publication
- Publication Date
- Mar 11, 2016
- Source ID
- 10.1126/science.aad1431
Entities
People
- Aaron T. Wright
- Anna Lipzen
- Aviv Regev
- Charles H. Haitjema
- Dawn A. Thompson
- Diego Borges-rivera
- Heather M. Brewer
- Igor V. Grigoriev
- John K. Henske
- Kevin V. Solomon
- Michael K. Theodorou
- Michelle O'Malley
- Samuel Owen Purvine
- Sean P. Gilmore
Organizations
- Broad Institute
- Environmental Molecular Sciences Laboratory
- Harper Adams University
- Joint Genome Institute
- Office of Biological and Environmental Research
- Pacific Northwest National Laboratory
- The Institute for Collaborative Biotechnologies
- United States Department of Agriculture
- United States Department of Energy
- University of California, Santa Barbara