Bacterial genomes: what they teach us about cellulose degradation

Abstract

Genome sequencing of cellulolytic bacteria combined with analyses using structural and sequence similarity software reveals potential cellulolytic enzymes not previously recovered by routine purification or shotgun cloning techniques. Comparison of the presence and absence of potential cellulases across the prokaryotes indicate that there are at least four distinct mechanisms of cellulose degradation; two distinct soluble systems and two separate cell-based systems can be postulated. None of the mechanisms appear completely homologous to the Trichoderma system of cellulose degradation. Minimum sets of bacterial cellulases can be predicted for the soluble sets based on comparison across genomes, leading to testable hypotheses on cellulose degradation.

Acknowledgements

The author would like to thank numerous researchers at the US Department of Energy Great Lakes Bioenergy Research Center (WI, USA), BioEnergy Science Center (TN, USA), and the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (CO, USA) for useful discussions over the past 5 years.

Financial & competing interests disclosure

The author is an employee and shareholder of C5-6 Technologies (WI, USA), a company that creates bio-based solutions to efficiently convert biomass into five and six carbon sugars. This work was funded by the US Department of Energy Great Lakes Bioenergy Research Center (WI, USA; US Department of Energy Biological and Environmental Research Office of Science DE-FC02–07ER64494). AMDG. The author has no other relevant affiliations or financial involvement with any organization or entity with a financial interest in or financial conflict with the subject matter or materials discussed in the manuscript apart from those disclosed.

No writing assistance was utilized in the production of this manuscript.