Wout Boerjan
Bio-energy
VIB Department of Plant Systems Biology, UGent

PhD: Univ. of Ghent, Ghent, Belgium, '93 VIB Group leader since 1996 Associate Professor since 2003

e-mail phone +32 9 331 38 81 ADDRESS

Current team members
Group leader: Wout Boerjan
Staff scientist: Eric Messens
Postdoctoral scientists: Bartel Vanholme, Chiarina Darrah, Jan Geerinck, Joanna Cross, Kris Morreel, Ruben Vanholme
Ph.D. Students: Brecht Demedts, Claudiu Niculaes, Halbay Turumtay, Oana Dima, Rebecca Van Acker
Support personnel: Bart Ivens, Geert Goeminne, Véronique Storme

Keywords
lignin wood - seasonal growth - metabolomics - gene expression profiling - plant transgenesis and phenotyping

Science

It is now well recognized that burning fossil fuels and deforestation are major contributors to climate-change, and that plant biomass can serve as an alternative renewable and carbon-neutral raw material for the production of bio-energy. Fast-growing perennial grasses, such as Miscanthus, and trees, such as poplar and willow, have large potential to become major energy crops for the future. In the production of bio-ethanol, lignin is the main limiting factor because it limits the accessibility of the cellulose microfibrils to enzymatic depolymerisation. There is enormous potential to improve plant cell walls by exploiting the available genetic resources and by genetic modification. This potential has remained largely unexplored. The major long-term goal of the Bio-energy group is to understand, through systems biology, the biosynthesis, polymerization and structure of lignin, and how lignin biosynthesis integrates into plant metabolism and development. This will provide the fundamental knowledge that is necessary to breed for, or engineer plant cell walls that are easier to convert to bio-ethanol. Both Arabidopsis and poplar are used as model systems. The genetic resources available in Populus, such as the availability of the genome sequence , mapping pedigrees and association populations, allow approaching the bio-energy problem also from a genetics point of view, and immediately in a target bio-energy crop.

The poplar files
After a calvary of nine months, the refusal eventually was changed into a permit. On 6 May 2009 the first transgenic poplar was planted by minister Ceysens. The files

Press releases
See also press release (15/01/2010): VIB-UGent poplar expert Wout Boerjan named world’s Forest Biotechnologist of the Year

See also press release (24/10/2008): Origin of root offshoots revealed − possible basis for new ecological agricultural applications - based on a publication in Science (De Smet et al., Science, 2008).

Strauss S, Tan H, Boerjan W, Sedjo R
Strangled at birth? Forest biotech and the Convention on Biological Diversity
NAT BIOTECHNOL 27, 519-27, 2009



Vanholme R, Morreel K, Ralph J, Boerjan W
Lignin engineering
CURR OPIN PLANT BIOL 11, 278-85, 2008



Leplé J, Dauwe R, Morreel K, Storme V, Lapierre C, Pollet B, Naumann A, Kang K, Kim H, Ruel K, Lefebvre a, Joseleau J, Grima-Pettenati J, De Rycke R, Andersson-Gunneras S, Erban A, Fehrle I, Petit-Conil M, Kopka J, Polle A, Messens E, Sundberg B, Mansfield S, Ralph J, Pilate G, Boerjan W
Downregulation of cinnamoyl-coenzyme a reductase in poplar: multiple-level phenotyping reveals effects on cell wall polymer metabolism and structure
PLANT CELL 19, 3669-91, 2007



Morreel K, Goeminne G, Storme V, Sterck L, Ralph J, Coppieters W, Breyne P, Steenackers M, Georges M, Messens E, Boerjan W
Genetical metabolomics of flavonoid biosynthesis in Populus: a case study
PLANT J 47, 224-37, 2006



Rohde A, Morreel K, Ralph J, Goeminne G, Hostyn V, De Rycke R, Kouchnir S, Van Doorsselaere J, Joseleau J P, Vuylsteke M, Van Driessche G, Van Beeumen J, Messens E, Boerjan W
Molecular phenotyping of the pal1 and pal2 mutants of Arabidopsis thaliana reveals far-reaching consequences on phenylpropanoid, amino acid, and carbohydrate metabolism
PLANT CELL 16, 2749-2771, 2004

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