Cellulose is still a mysterious polymer in many ways: structure of microfibrils, thermodynamics of synthesis and degradation, and interactions with other plant cell wall components. Our aim is to uncover the details and mechanisms of cellulose digestion and synthesis. We report the details of the structure of cellulose 1-beta under several temperature conditions and report here the results of these studies and connections to experimental measurements and the measurement in-silico the free energy of decrystallization of several morphologies of cellulose. In spatially large modeling, we show the most recent work of mapping atomistic and coarse-grain models into tomographic images of cellulose and extreme coarse-grain modeling of interactions of large cellulase complexes with microfibrils. We discuss the difficulties of modeling cellulose and suggest future work both experimental and theoretical to increase our understanding of cellulose and our ability to use it as a raw material for fuels and materials.

Simulating cellulose structure, properties, thermodynamics, synthesis, and deconstruction with atomistic and coarse-grain models

243rd National Meeting (2012)

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