Chemo-Enzymatic Synthesis of Starch from Cellulose
4 affiliations
- 1State Key Laboratory of Engineering Biology for Low-Carbon Manufacturing, Tianjin Institute of Industrial Biotechnology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, 32 West 7th Avenue, Tianjin, China, 300308
- 2vitro Synthetic Biology Center
- 3Tianjin Institute of Industrial Biotechnology, Chinese Academy of Sciences
- 4University of Chinese Academy of Sciences
Abstract
The biotransformation of cellulose to starch (i.e., enzymatic rearrangement of beta-1,4- to alpha-1,4-glycosidic bonds) is an out-of-the-box solution to ensure food security and it would provide sufficient feedstock of industrial biomanufacturing and revolutionize agriculture. However, enzymatic cellulose hydrolysis remains costly because weight-based cellulase loading (e.g., 20 kg of cellulase per 1000 kg of cellulose) is two orders of magnitude of that of starch hydrolysis. Here we develop a chemo-enzymatic synthesis involving cellulose dissociation mediated by the reconstituted cellulose solvent followed by cell-free glycosidicbond rearrangement catalyzed by an advanced multi-enzyme molecular machine. Inspired by starch gelatinization, we dissociate microcrystalline cellulose to insoluble long-chain cellodextrins, which can be hydrolyzed completely by a 95% decrease in cellulase loading. This chemo-enzymatic synthesis achieves a cellulose-to-amylose yield of 96.9% even when an ultra-low cellulase loading was used, i.e., 1 kg of cellulase is enough to completely hydrolyze 1,000 kg of cellulose. The high-efficiency chemo-enzymatic synthesis would make sufficient synthetic starch from cellulose, feeding the world and energizing the bioeconomy.
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BibTeX
@misc{wang2026chemoenzymatic,
title = {{Chemo-Enzymatic Synthesis of Starch from Cellulose}},
author = {Jingting Wang and Yi-Heng P. Job Zhang},
howpublished = {ChemRxiv},
year = {2026},
month = oct,
doi = {10.26434/chemrxiv.15010375/v1},
url = {https://chemrxiv.org/doi/full/10.26434/chemrxiv.15010375/v1},
note = {CC BY},
}
RIS
TY - UNPB
TI - Chemo-Enzymatic Synthesis of Starch from Cellulose
AU - Jingting Wang
AU - Yi-Heng P. Job Zhang
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/10/13
PB - ChemRxiv
DO - 10.26434/chemrxiv.15010375/v1
UR - https://chemrxiv.org/doi/full/10.26434/chemrxiv.15010375/v1
AB - The biotransformation of cellulose to starch (i.e., enzymatic rearrangement of beta-1,4- to alpha-1,4-glycosidic bonds) is an out-of-the-box solution to ensure food security and it would provide sufficient feedstock of industrial biomanufacturing and revolutionize agriculture. However, enzymatic cellulose hydrolysis remains costly because weight-based cellulase loading (e.g., 20 kg of cellulase per 1000 kg of cellulose) is two orders of magnitude of that of starch hydrolysis. Here we develop a chemo-enzymatic synthesis involving cellulose dissociation mediated by the reconstituted cellulose solvent followed by cell-free glycosidicbond rearrangement catalyzed by an advanced multi-enzyme molecular machine. Inspired by starch gelatinization, we dissociate microcrystalline cellulose to insoluble long-chain cellodextrins, which can be hydrolyzed completely by a 95% decrease in cellulase loading. This chemo-enzymatic synthesis achieves a cellulose-to-amylose yield of 96.9% even when an ultra-low cellulase loading was used, i.e., 1 kg of cellulase is enough to completely hydrolyze 1,000 kg of cellulose. The high-efficiency chemo-enzymatic synthesis would make sufficient synthetic starch from cellulose, feeding the world and energizing the bioeconomy.
ER -