NSF Award
2421209
Increased aridity and weather instability due to climate change, along with biomass accumulation due to decades of effective suppression of naturally occurring fires, have resulted in much of the Western US being highly prone to catastrophic wildfire. The primary current tool for mitigation of forest-fires involves thinning followed by “controlled” burning of the resulting slash. Unfortunately, such activities have resulted in the ignition of catastrophic mega-wildfires, with significant loss of life and property and environmental and economic degradation. There is a significant need for new approaches for disposal of thinned slash, and at the same time, a growing need to replace petroleum-based products to lessen the greenhouse gases that imperil forest health through climate change. Coniferous forests contain significant stores of potential chemical feedstocks such as cellulose that can, in principle, be readily converted to valuable chemical products by bioprocessing methods such as fermentation. These feedstocks are present in wood in a closely associated matrix with lignin, a complex chemical compound which prohibits large scale usage of wood in green chemical processes. This TRAILBLAZER project seeks to develop a groundbreaking new approach toward lignin degradation that will unlock the potential of wood as a green chemical feedstock. The development of this new technology will require a research approach incorporating several fundamental advances to provide an efficient and transformative means for usage of woody biomass, which has the potential to change the economics of forest thinning as an effective and safe means of fire mitigation. This project’s relevance to forest sustainability will supercharge its Broadening Participation Plan by focusing recruitment, outreach and engagement efforts on Native American and Hispanic communities that rely on forest health in North Central New Mexico, an area with some of the oldest communities in the nation and that is increasingly at high risk for devastation by catastrophic wildfires.<br/><br/>This fundamental research aims to tackle the “lignin barrier” problem through revolutionary, eco-friendly approaches that stem from biochemical engineering, synthetic biology, and materials science. Enzymes such as oxidases and peroxidases that are known to break down lignin are found in numerous fungi and bacteria, nature’s primary forest product recyclers. The goal of this project is to exploit, engineer, and evolve enzyme-based methods to enable efficient, irreversible breakdown of lignin in model coniferous feedstocks that represent the typical makeup of most western thinning waste. The fundamental developments to be achieved will provide a platform technology for the pretreatment of lignin-containing biomass well beyond coniferous woody waste to several other biomass feedstocks. The key step of lignin degradation will enable the success of many promising yet still challenging processes for biomass utilization, including the production of biofuels, engineered lumber, bioplastics and textiles, pharmaceuticals, commodity chemicals, and other valuable natural products. While the focus of this project is on lignin degradation as a key limiting process for utilization of woody biomass, the fundamental approaches developed will find utility in a number of other critically important biochemical conversions, including biofuel cell catalysis, detoxification, bioremediation, disinfection, and enzymatic therapies.<br/><br/>This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.
