ScienceDaily: Ask a biofuel researcher to name the single greatest technical barrier to cost-effective ethanol, and you're likely to receive a one-word response: lignin.
Cellulosic ethanol--fuel derived from woody plants and waste biomass--has the potential to become an affordable, renewable transportation fuel that rivals gasoline, but lignin, one of the most ubiquitous components of the plant cell wall, gets in the way.
In nature, the resilient lignin polymer helps provide the scaffolding for plants, reinforcing...