Cellulose and hemicellulose are the major constituents of lignified plant cell wall. These polysaccharides have a great potential to be used for the bioconversion to bioethanol. Nevertheless, difficulty of enzyme to access to these polysaccharides remains one of the main issues due to the complexity of their structural network. The improvement of enzymatic biorefining requires a constant effort for discovering new activities and for the development of efficient enzymatic cocktails. It is thus necessary to accelerate both the investigation of the discovery of natural and genetically modified efficient enzymes. This notably requires the use of break-through technologies for high-throughput screening strategies. Recently, we demonstrated that nanometric thin films based on polysaccharides from plant cell walls are suitable devices for the detection of enzymatic activity (1-2-3). By controlling the film thickness and architecture at the nanoscale, a structural color appears due to interference phenomena. When the film is submitted to enzyme that can hydrolyze biopolymer, the thickness of the film is decreased inducing a color change. In this work, we present two systems taking advantage of the versatile interaction properties of cellulose nanocrystals (CNC). Indeed CNC can both interact with cationic xylans (CX) via electrostatic interactions and with xyloglucan (XG) via van der Waals forces and hydrogen bonding. (CNC-CX) and (CNC-XG) films were used as biosensors to detect xylanase and cellulase activities. The relevance of the system in terms of sensitivity to enzyme action compared to a conventional enzymatic assay in solution was validated opening the road to fast, reliable, easy to handle new assay, compatible with automation devices for enzymatic activities detection.[1] C. Cerclier et al. (2010). Langmuir., 26, 17248.[2] C. Cerclier et al.(2011). Adv. Mater., 23, 3791.[3] A.Guyomard-Lack et al.(2012). Eur. Phys. J., Special Topics., 213, 291.[4] A. Dammak et al. (2013). Holzforschung., 67, 579.

Structurally colored nanometric thin films composed of plant cell wall polymers for enzymatic activities detection

247th National Meeting (2014)

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