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CLSF (Center for Lignocellulose Structure and Formation) is a DOE Energy Frontiers Research Center focused on developing a detailed understanding of lignocellulose, the main structural material in plants, from cellulose synthesis and fibril formation to a mature plant cell wall, forming a foundation for significant advancement in sustainable energy and materials.

> Read more about our latest research news on our News page, see our most recent publications and one page highlights on our Research page.

Latest News

A plant cell wall’s unique ability to expand without weakening or breaking—a quality required for plant growth—is due the movement of its cellulose skeleton, according to new research that models the cell wall. The new model, created by Penn State CLSF researchers, reveals that chains of cellulose bundle together within the cell wall, providing strength, and slide against each other when the cell is stretched, providing extensibility. The new study, which appears online May 14 in the journal Science, presents a new concept of the plant cell wall, gives insights into plant cell growth, and could provide inspiration for the design of polymeric materials with new properties. Read PSU news coverage and watch a short video that demostrates the dynamics during stretching. (May 14, 2021)

Cellulose Synthase has been featured as "Molecule of the Month" on PDB-101, an Educational portal of RCSB Protein Data Bank.  A gorgeous image of cellulose synthase based on the crystallography structure submitted by the Zimmer CLSF group (Purushotham et al. 2020, Science) was created by molecular artist David S. Goodsell.  This highlight by Goodsell also includes a striking artistic representation of a plant cell wall. (February 2021)

Research led by Enrique Gomez and Esther Gomez at Penn State has identified, for the first time, that cellulose crystals have a preferred orientation relative to the cell wall in plants and may be due to some common consequence of how plants make their cell walls. These findings published in September in Nature Communications may help settle a long-standing debate in the cellulose field — whether crystals within plant cell walls twist — because heaving a preferred orientation suggests that crystals aren't twisting.  These findings came as a result of applying a technique called grazing-incidence wide-angle X-ray scattering (GIWAXS) “developed for materials science and used extensively for the study of thin films, including polymer films” to the study of plant cell walls. Read PSU news story (November 17, 2020)

CLSF researchers at the University of Virginia determined the structure of a cellulose synthase CesA homotrimer which enables structural insights into the unique nanomachinery used by plants to form cellulose chains and microfibrils from sugar monomers. It provides a detailed entry point for investigating how the enzyme works, how three of the enzymes assemble into trimeric subunits, and how six of the subunits assemble into the cellulose synthesis complex which makes the cellulose microfibril.  The Zimmer group published this structure of a poplar cellulose synthase CesA homotrimer in Science (Purushotham et al 2020). Read more about the relevance of these findings on how plant make cell walls.  (July 9, 2020)

CLSF member Mei Hong wins the 2021 Nakanishi Prize for her development and use of advanced solid-state NMR to elucidate structure-function relationships of plant cell walls, amyloid proteins and membrane proteins. The prize is to be presented at a ceremony in conjunction with the March ACS meeting. See the list of ACS 2021 National Award winners here. (August 17, 2020)

Dr. Tuo Wang, Assistant Professor of Chemistry at Louisiana State University, and an alumni of CLSF from Hong lab at MIT, is joining CLSF as a senior investigator with LSU as a partner institution.  His research employs solid-state NMR and Dynamic Nuclear Polarization (DNP) methods to understand the structure and packing of lignin and polysaccharides in secondary plant cell walls.  Dr. Wang recently received the DOE Early Career Award to support his group's research elucidating lignin-carbohydrate interactions in plant secondary cell walls.  (June 2020)

Herringbone pattern in plant cell walls critical to cell growth: Penn State News highlighted a new research study from the CLSF which investigated the protein CSI1, found that the alternating directionality of layers in a plant cell wall are critical for cell growth. The researchers, which include a collaboration between Penn State’s Cosgrove and Gu groups and Oak Ridge National Lab, believe that CSI1 and the crossed-polylamellate wall structure are critical to the elongation of cells and suggest that existing theories about cell growth are incomplete. The study has been published in the Journal of Experimental Botany. (February 7, 2020)

CLSF's James Kubicki discussed honing models on cellulose synthesis and the strength of working in a group of scientists with mixed backgrounds and specialties in the article Inspiration, Not Imitation: Chemists with Energy Research Centers design molecules for natural function in the Summer 2019 Frontiers in Energy Research Newsletter. Since our group started with a good number of scientist that had never worked on the topic of plant cell walls, and continues to add member scientists outside this field, "[We] came in without having the prejudices and biases that people had from reading the literature from the past thirty years... We challenged many of the fundamental assumptions,” Kubicki said, “and one of those was the size of the cellulose microfibril.” Read the full article here

(July 12, 2019)

A video about the rewards and challenges of working on our cell wall research was created by a team of our early career scientists at Penn State (Sintu Rongpipi, Dr. Deborah Petrik, and Lynnicia Massenburg) - watch it here: https://youtu.be/ZmKKyKHYYec.

(June 18, 2019)

Mother Nature Does It Better: The Frontiers in Energy Research Newsletter (Fall 2018) featured an article written by one of CLSF's senior PhD candidates at Penn State University, Amin Makerem. This article discusses some advantages and challenges of incorporating biology into the science of energy which several of the EFRCs, including CLSF are undertaking.

Here is an excerpt from the article: "Researchers in CLSF are trying to unravel the process of cellulose formation and growth in plant cell walls... Scientists struggle to get the answers they want because of limitations in characterization technologies, as complex structures are hard to unravel at the atomic level (and biologocal systems have their own environmental sensitivities)... Researchers at CLSF find themselves on the front line to tackle these challenges, and they often invent the technology required for deepening their knowledge on a particular biological process through technological advancements in spectroscopy, microscopy, gene modification, modeling, and reconstitution of biological processes from isolated components."

(December 5, 2018)

A pioneering study based on high-resolution scanning electron microscopy and novel nanogold tags to resolve xyloglucan conformations and locations at the nanoscale within complex cell walls. The results help us refine our models of growing cell walls and the role of matrix-cellulose interactions. This article Zheng et al. 2018 (The Plant Journal 93(2): 211–226) was featured as the cover image of The Plant Journal's Volume 93 Issue 2 and subject of a research highlight article.

• Plant cell walls' stretch-but-don't break growth more complex than once thought - Penn State News highlights research from CLSF Cosgrove lab. "A close-up look at the growth of plant cell walls, which largely determines the way a plant grows and takes shape, offers a better understanding of how the tough-but-flexible walls expand." Zhang et al. (2017) Nanoscale movements in primary cell walls was published in Nature Plants.
• Poetry of Science Contest Winner: "Afterlife of a photon"
  The 32 Energy Frontier Research Centers (EFRCs) were challenged to convey the wonder of science using poetry inspired by a scientific image. Sixteen teams took up the challenge, and a rich variety of images and poems that evoked the complexities, splendor, and awe of energy science. The Office of Science chose the CLSF's submission "Afterlife of a photon" as the first place winner. "Afterlife of a photon" describes a photon's perspective of its birth, travel and current bondage in a celluose molecule of wood.
  View CLSF Winning Entry "Afterlife of a photon" <or> listen to a reading of "Afterlife of a photon" (September 30, 2015)

• Ten Hundred and One Word Challenge Winner: Powering your car with sun light
  The Ten Hundred and One Word Challenge invited the 46 Energy Frontier Research Centers (EFRCs) to represent their science in images and words, but any descriptions or words could only use the 1000 most commonly used words in the English language, with the addition of one word important to each of the EFRCs and the mission of DOE: energy. Thirty-one teams took up the challenge, and submitted a diverse array of highly creative and visually captivating entries that told the story of the innovative, ground-breaking science performed in the EFRCs. The Office of Science chose the CLSF's submission "Powering your car with sun light" as the overall winner.
  View CLSF Winning Entry - small version | large version (July 18, 2013)

• Last Updated May 15, 2021