{"id":280454,"date":"2017-02-28T08:10:05","date_gmt":"2017-02-28T12:10:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/?guid=318a75753e421678a2d4ac10e1114a5d"},"modified":"2017-02-28T08:10:05","modified_gmt":"2017-02-28T12:10:05","slug":"understanding-how-brown-rot-fungi-degrade-wood-could-lead-to-new-tools-for-more-efficient-biofuel-production","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/?p=280454","title":{"rendered":"Understanding how brown rot fungi degrade wood could lead to new tools for more efficient biofuel production"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Wood&#8217;s complex structure makes it highly resistant to biological or chemical decomposition. The structure includes cellulose, long chains of linked sugar molecules, embedded in a scaffolding of a chemical known as lignin. Brown rot fungi, however, possess a unique ability to attack the cellulose fraction of wood while avoiding the surrounding lignin. This study provides evidence that brown rot fungi accomplish this using a two-step process. The steps are (1) secrete a set of chemicals and enzymes that open up the lignin framework and (2) release a second set of enzymes that break down the cellulose chains into sugars. The sugars are absorbed by the fungi and could be the basis for biofuels.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Wood&#8217;s complex structure makes it highly resistant to biological or chemical decomposition. The structure includes cellulose, long chains of linked sugar molecules, embedded in a scaffolding of a chemical known as lignin. Brown rot fungi, however, poss&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":615444,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-280454","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/280454","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=280454"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/280454\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":280455,"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/280454\/revisions\/280455"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/615444"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=280454"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=280454"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=280454"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}