Year: 2026
Type: preprint
Abstract: The biotransformation of cellulose to starch (i.e., enzymatic rearrangement of beta-1,4- to alpha-1,4-glycosidic bonds) is an out-of-the-box solution to ensure food security and it would provide sufficient feedstock of industrial biomanufacturing and revolutionize agriculture. However, enzymatic cellulose hydrolysis remains costly because weight-based cellulase loading (e.g., 20 kg of cellulase per 1000 kg of cellulose) is two orders of magnitude of that of starch hydrolysis. Here we develop a chemo-enzymatic synthesis involving cellulose dissociation mediated by the reconstituted cellulose solvent followed by cell-free glycosidicbond rearrangement catalyzed by an advanced multi-enzyme molecular machine. Inspired by starch gelatinization, we dissociate microcrystalline cellulose to insoluble long-chain cellodextrins, which can be hydrolyzed completely by a 95% decrease in cellulase loading. This chemo-enzymatic synthesis achieves a cellulose-to-amylose yield of 96.9% even when an ultra-low cellulase loading was used, i.e., 1 kg of cellulase is enough to completely hydrolyze 1,000 kg of cellulose. The high-efficiency chemo-enzymatic synthesis would make sufficient synthetic starch from cellulose, feeding the world and energizing the bioeconomy.
Source: ChemRxiv
Authors: Jingting Wang, Yi-Heng P. Job Zhang
Language: English
Subfield: Molecular Biology
Domain: Life Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W7221701456