Lignocellulosic biomass, sugars from

Recent studies have proven ethanol to be an ideal liquid fuel for transportation and renewable lignocellulosic biomass to be an attractive feedstock for ethanol fuel production by fermentation (1,2). The major fermentable sugars from hydrolysis of lignocellulosic biomass, such as rice and wheat straw, sugarcane bagasse, corn stover, corn fiber, softwood, hardwood, and grasses, are D-glucose and D-xylose except that softwood... 

If organisms could be found or metabolically engineered that efficiently ferment both the pentoses and hexoses under practical conditions at high yields and short residence times, fermentation ethanol technology would then have reached another plateau with low-cost lignocellulosic feedstocks. Simultaneous saccharification and fermentation or separate saccharification and fermentation of essentially all the sugars that make up the polysaccharides would each be able to approach the theoretical limit of fermentation ethanol production from the polysaccharides in low-cost lignocellulosic biomass. 

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