Project description
Innovating sustainability in a wood-driven economy
With the global shift towards sustainability amidst climate change, the demand for renewable alternatives to petroleum is at an all-time high. Wood, a cornerstone of various industries from construction to energy, faces escalating demand due to policies promoting its use for energy generation. However, this surge threatens natural forests, leading to increased monoculture plantations and biodiversity loss. Supported by the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions (MSCA) programme, the LigMo project emerges as a pioneering initiative. By introducing lignin-biosynthetic genes into fast-growing moss species, such as Physcomitrium patens, LigMo aims to develop innovative biomaterials that could reduce reliance on traditional wood sources and alleviate pressures on natural ecosystems.
Objective
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.
Fields of science
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques.
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques.
- medical and health sciencesmedical biotechnologygenetic engineering
- natural sciencesearth and related environmental sciencesatmospheric sciencesclimatologyclimatic changes
- engineering and technologyindustrial biotechnologybiomaterials
- agricultural sciencesagricultural biotechnologybiomass
- agricultural sciencesagriculture, forestry, and fisheriesforestry
Programme(s)
- HORIZON.1.2 - Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions (MSCA) Main Programme
Funding Scheme
HORIZON-TMA-MSCA-PF-EF - HORIZON TMA MSCA Postdoctoral Fellowships - European FellowshipsCoordinator
75794 Paris
France