In Planta Cell Wall Engineering: From Mutants to Artificial Cell Walls

To mitigate the effects of global warming and to preserve the limited fossil fuel resources, an increased exploitation of plant-based materials and fuels is required, which would be one of the most important innovations related to sustainable development. Cell walls account for the majority of plant dry biomass and so is the target of such innovations. In this review, we discuss recent advances in in planta cell wall engineering through genetic manipulations, with a focus on wild-type-based and mutant-based approaches. The long history of using a wild-type-based approach has resulted in the development of many strategies for manipulating lignin, hemicellulose and pectin to decrease cell wall recalcitrance. In addition to enzyme-encoding genes, many transcription factor genes important for changing relevant cell wall characteristics have been identified. Although mutant-based cell wall engineering is relatively new, it has become feasible due to the rapid development of genome-editing technologies and systems biology-related research; we will soon enter an age of designed artificial wood production via complex genetic manipulations of many industrially important trees and crops.