Progress in lignocellulose deconstruction by fungi

Abstract:

Inefficient degradation of lignocellulose is one of the main barriers for the utilization of renewable plant biomass for biofuel production. The bottleneck of the biorefinery process is the generation of fermentable sugars from complicated biomass polymers. In nature, the main microbes of lignocelluloses deconstruction are fungi. Therefore, elucidating the mechanism of lignocelluloses degradation by fungi is of critical importance for the commercialization of lignocellulosic biofuels. This review focuses on the progress in lignocelluloses degradation pathways in fungi, especially on the advances made by functional genomics studies.