Evolution of <i>p</i>‐coumaroylated lignin in eudicots provides new tools for cell wall engineering
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Ester-linked p-coumarate (pCA) is a hallmark feature of the secondary cell walls in commelinid monocot plants. It has been shown that pCA groups arise during lignin polymerisation from the participation of monolignol conjugates assembled by p-coumaroyl-CoA:monolignol transferase (PMT) enzymes, members of the BAHD superfamily of acyltransferases. Herein, we report that a eudicot species, kenaf (Hibiscus cannabinus), naturally contains p-coumaroylated lignin in the core tissues of the stems but not in the bast fibres. Moreover, we identified a novel acyltransferase, HcPMT, that shares <30% amino acid identity with known monocot PMT sequences. Recombinant HcPMT showed a preference in enzyme assays for p-coumaroyl-CoA and benzoyl-CoA as acyl donor substrates and sinapyl alcohol as an acyl acceptor. Heterologous expression of HcPMT in hybrid poplar trees led to the incorporation of pCA in lignin, but no improvement in the saccharification potential of the wood. This work illustrates the value in mining diverse plant taxa for new monolignol acyltransferases. Furthermore, the occurrence of pCA outside monocot lineages may represent another example of convergent evolution in lignin structure. This discovery expands textbook views on cell wall biochemistry and provides a new molecular tool for engineering the lignin of biomass feedstock plants.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame distilled prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.
Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one teacher head, not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".