OAK RIDGE, Tenn., March 29, 2011 — New clues about plant structure are helping researchers from the Department of Energy's BioEnergy Science Center narrow down a large collection of poplar tree candidates and identify winners for future use in biofuel production.

Led by Charles Wyman of the Bourns College of Engineering's Center for Environmental Research and Technology at the University of California, Riverside, a research team from Oak Ridge National Laboratory, the National Renewable Energy Laboratory and UCR determined that the amount and composition of lignin in the plant's cell wall interact in an unanticipated way to influence release of sugar from the plant.

The research was published as "Lignin content in natural Populus variants affects sugar release," in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Lignin serves as a major roadblock for biofuel production because it forms strong bonds with sugars and interferes with access to these carbohydrates, making it difficult to extract the plant's sugars contained in cellulose and hemicellulose for conversion to transportation fuels. 

Read the full release at www.ornl.gov.