Controlled production of cellulases in plants for biomass conversion. Progress report, June 15, 1996--March 10, 1997

The goal of this project is to facilitate conversion of plant biomass to usable energy by developing transgenic plants that express genes for microbial cellulases, which can be activated after harvest of the plants. In particular, we want to determine the feasibility of targeting an endoglucanase and a cellobiohydrolase to the plant apoplast (cell wall milieu). The apoplast not only contains cellulose, the substrate for the enzymes, but also can tolerate large amounts of foreign protein. To avoid detrimental effects of cellulase expression in plants, we have chosen enzymes with high temperature optima; the genes for these enzymes are from thermophilic organisms that can use cellulose as a sole energy source