A genetic engineering approach for Lignification of cell walls from Moss to develop novel wood-like biomass.

In the current context of climate change, transitioning from a petroleum-based economy to more sustainable alternatives is of top priority.

Wood is one of the most abundant renewable resources with established roles in the furniture, construction, paper and energy sectors.

Because of this, demand for wood is increasing as policies around the world promote energy generation from wood, risking increased deforestation and exchange of diverse forests for monoculture plantations.

The industrial applications of wood depend on its composition, specifically that of lignin in the secondary cell wall (SCW).

Although much is known about lignification through extensive research on Arabidopsis thaliana and other vascular plants, there are still knowledge gaps involving the initiation and control of lignin polymerization that remain to be addressed in order to outline the core set of genes associated with the emergence of lignin.In these lines, the long-term goal of this proposal is to engineer innovative wood-like biomass by introducing lignin-biosynthetic genes in fast-growing moss to establish new types of biomaterials, potentially reducing the use of wood in certain applications and alleviating increasing pressures on forests.Mosses are land plants lacking lignified vascular tissues but have homologous genes to most steps in lignin biosynthesis.

We hypothesize that the lack of lignin in mosses makes them potential model systems to determine how lignin polymerization and SCW formation occur in plants.In this proposal, we will systematically transform the model moss Physcomitrium patens, with genes from vascular plants until canonical lignin is observed in its cell wall.

The outcomes of this work will pave the way for innovative biomass sources and potentially provide insights into tailoring lignin composition and transferring such knowledge to existing agricultural biomass. This approach also promises to become a powerful tool for basic research in the study of lignin.