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Our Mission

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.

In the News

CLSF received an honorable mention in the EFRC Science Art contest for their poem “The Hierarchy of Cellulose,” written by Penn State University graduate student Mica Pitcher with accompanying image by Laura Ullrich (CLSF Manager).  This beautiful poem describes the complexity of the hierarchical structure of cellulose in nature. While highly complex, there still exists some chaos and disorder in the system. A set number of cellulose chains become elementary fibrils, which bundle into microfibrils, and then macroscale fibers in the cell walls of plants. This structure built by nature is highly intricate and interesting, enabling many of the interesting properties and applications of cellulose and lignocellulosic materials. (September 2023)
See the poem at https://www.energyfrontier.us/the-hierarchy-of-cellulose     

CLSF’s Paul Dupree (University of Cambridge) was elected as a new member of the European Molecular Biology Organization (EMBO), an organization of leading researchers that promotes excellence in the life sciences in Europe and beyond. 
https://www.embo.org/press-releases/embo-announces-election-of-new-members/
Paul Dupree received this prestigious honor for his work with plant cell wall biosynthesis and assembly, and Paul Dupree is a valuable team member of the CLSF.    (July 2023)

The editorial team of Nature Plants chose to highlight CLSF’s latest research publication (Temple et al. 2022) in their research briefing “Shutting the door on polysaccharide methylation". “Most polysaccharide biosynthesis and some modifications, including methylation, occur in the Golgi body. Thus, identifying potential transporters of SAM into the Golgi is important for understanding the role of pectin modifications in cell wall structure and function.”   (June 2022)

Collaboration Takes Down Walls: A team of our early career researchers created a beautiful graphic depicting "Science in the Time of Covid". The background of each green plant "cell" in a stylized Zoom call is an image taken from the research performed by the corresponding researcher during the time of COVID, representing diverse approaches such as cryo electron microscopy, coarse-grained and atomistic modeling, super-resolution fluorescence microscopy, genetic engineering, cell wall regeneration, nanogold labeling and SEM imaging. The Department of Energy acknowledged our artwork entry "Open Cell Walls of Communication" with a Special Award Collaboration Takes Down Walls. If you want to see how the other DOE research centers described performing science during the COVID pandemic, see the entries at https://www.energyfrontier.us/science-in-time-of-covid.  (October 2021)

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)

Dr. Tuo Wang, Assistant Professor of Chemistry at Louisiana State University, and an alumni of CLSF from the 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)

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)

• Last Updated December 1, 2023