Developing a Sustainable Bioenergy System: Paulownia production for Fuel, Chemicals and Materials

Plant cellulose synthases belong to a large family of enzymes known as glucosyltransferases. Cellulose synthase genes are found from wide group of organisms starting from bacteria, fungi, viruses and all the way to plants . Development of lignocellulosic biofuel from biomass depend of understanding of cellulose biosynthesis in plants. The genes responsible for various economically important phenotypic trails in Paulownia are unknown including genes responsible for rapid growth, cellulose biosynthesis etc. It is very important to identify some of these genes to understand complex metabolic pathways of cellulose biosynthes is in Paulownia. The two objectives of this project are (I) Identification of putative cellulose synthase genes from Paulownia Subobjective: Perform a comparative analysis of cellulose synthase genes in Paulownia and (2) Develop a publicly available EST library. It is well known that differentiation of vascular cambium results in lateral growth in wood (xylem) producing trees. In spite of economic importance of Paulownia wood as source of biofuel, no information is available about genetic control of wood formation in this tree. Our plan is to develop a publicly available EST library of Paulownia. The EST library will help us to understand complex mechanism of various metabolic processes (e.g. cellulose synthesis, rapid growth) in the plant. This EST library will help us in gene discovery in this economically important species.