Mastery of Xylan and Cellulose will enable stronger glues for wooden skyscrapers

Molecules 10,000 times narrower than the width of a human hair could hold the key to making possible wooden skyscrapers and more energy-efficient paper production. The two most common large molecules – or ‘polymers’ – found on Earth are cellulose and xylan, both of which are found in the cell walls of materials such as wood and straw. They play a key role in determining the strength of materials and how easily they can be digested.

Cambridge UK researchers found that cellulose induces xylan to untwist itself and straighten out, allowing it to attach itself to the cellulose molecule. It then acts as a kind of ‘glue’ that can protect cellulose or bind the molecules together, making very strong structures.”

Understanding how cellulose and xylan fit together could have a dramatic effect on industries as diverse as biofuels, paper production and agriculture, according to Paul Dupree.

“One of the biggest barriers to ‘digesting’ plants – whether that’s for use as biofuels or as animal feed, for example – has been breaking down the tough cellular walls,” he says. “Take paper production – enormous amounts of energy are required for this process. A better understanding of the relationship between cellulose and xylan could help us vastly reduce the amount of energy required for such processes.”

But just as this could improve how easily materials can be broken down, the discovery may also help them create stronger materials, he says. There are already plans to build houses in the UK more sustainably using wood, and Paul Dupree is involved in the Centre for Natural Material Innovation at the University of Cambridge, which is looking at whether buildings as tall as skyscrapers could be built using modified wood.

Nature Communications – Folding of xylan onto cellulose fibrils in plant cell walls revealed by solid-state NMR

Abstract

Exploitation of plant lignocellulosic biomass is hampered by our ignorance of the molecular basis for its properties such as strength and digestibility. Xylan, the most prevalent non-cellulosic polysaccharide, binds to cellulose microfibrils. The nature of this interaction remains unclear, despite its importance. Here we show that the majority of xylan, which forms a threefold helical screw in solution, flattens into a twofold helical screw ribbon to bind intimately to cellulose microfibrils in the cell wall. 13C solid-state magic-angle spinning (MAS) nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy, supported by in silico predictions of chemical shifts, shows both two- and threefold screw xylan conformations are present in fresh Arabidopsis stems. The twofold screw xylan is spatially close to cellulose, and has similar rigidity to the cellulose microfibrils, but reverts to the threefold screw conformation in the cellulose-deficient irx3 mutant. The discovery that induced polysaccharide conformation underlies cell wall assembly provides new principles to understand biomass properties.