By Sören Back, SB Kommunikation, Ornsköldsvik, Sweden
BRUSSELS,
Jan. 3, 2011
(RISI) -
Umeå in northern Sweden is home to a world-class interdisciplinary research program in forest biotechnology, the Umeå Plant Science Centre. Parts of its efforts are aimed at identifying the genetic mechanisms underlying the production of woody biomass and its properties. Sören Back spoke with Björn Sundberg, professor at SLU (Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences), in Umeå and program director for FuncFiber.
How come Umeå, in the northern part of Sweden, is a world-leading centre within forest biotechnology?
Back some 15 years ago, the first steps were already being taken towards establishing a world-leading center in forest biotechnology. In 2000, the Umeå Plant Science Centre was established, and later, the forest biotechnology company SweTree Technologies. By optimizing our resources and competences and with support from forest industries, we have achieved this position.
Our goal was from the start to be world leader in our field and very early on, we were able to set up populus as a model species for biotechnology research on woody species. Among other things we established technology to produce transgenic trees, and we also established a database for gene sequences. These are necessary tools to produce high quality research.
You mentioned that the industry is part of the success story. How?
We realized from the beginning that any research has to have a receiver who can capitalise on the results and turn them into products. Therefore, early in the process we got in touch with the major Swedish forest companies to get their views and needs in this area as well as their support. They understood the importance of the new technology and have since then given us strong support. Our common view is that technology leaps are not possible without extensive, basic research.
What is FuncFiber and what has it achieved?
FuncFiber is a Formas centre of excellence in wood science. The Swedish Research Council Formas promotes and supports basic research and need-driven research for sustainable development within environment, agricultural sciences and spatial planning. In 2006 we were granted funds for the FuncFiber project, which ends this year (2010).
The aim was to unravel the function of genes underlying the biomass production and the structure and chemistry of wood fibres. It is an interdisciplinary research program which has taken advantage of using populus as model species.
A major effort within FuncFiber is the establishment of transgenic trees with modified wood properties to be used by the research groups as well as novel chemical tools and prediction models for wood properties. Large amounts of data about wood properties have been collected for the transgenic trees in the databank and analyzed with chemometrical approaches with the final goal to create models of wood properties from high throughput fingerprinting technology.
The collective output from this effort resulted in an extremely valuable tree database, "FuncFiber 100". A method for creating chemical maps of wood is now a reality due to this project as well as new NMR methods for chemical characterization. In all, FuncFiber has delivered in-depth knowledge about gene function in wood formation which will be exploited in the new project Bioimprove and last but not least, increased and strengthened the network of different competences within this field.
How will your results influence tree breeding?
It is important to understand how the biology controls the properties of woody biomass. So far, tree breeding in the Nordic countries has been done with traditional approaches, i.e., identification of trees with good properties, cross-fertilizing them and waiting 20 years for the next cross. Although this approach is very successful, it is still slow. With molecular technology it is possible to fingerprint the genome of individual trees in small seedlings. If we have knowledge about valuable gene-variants, this technology has the potential to speed up the whole breeding process enormously.
You are now using populus as a model system. What about a softwood like spruce?
To do good research on gene function it is important to have the whole genome of the organism sequenced. Because the genome of conifers is many times larger than, for example, the human genome, it has up to now not been possible to sequence any conifer genome. But within the "Swedish conifer genome project" funded by the Wallenberg Foundations and headed by Professor Per Ingvarsson in Umeå, we are now using new sequencing technology to determine the genome sequence of Norway Spruce. This is an interdisciplinary project between UPSC, KTH and Karolinska Institutet. With the knowledge of the conifer genome sequence, the research about conifer genes will take a major leap and eventually the breeding of spruce will be faster and more efficient.
What's next for the program?
In summer 2010, we started up a new Formas funded project, Bioimprove: "Improved biomass and bioprocessing properties of wood", with a 25-million SEK grant for the five-year period, 2010-2014. The project is being led by Hannele Tuominen and will produce more knowledge about molecular mechanisms that control biomass production and chemical composition of the wood in forest trees. However, the project also aims at doing research on how this knowledge can be utilized to improve production of materials and green chemicals from the lignocellulosic raw material in biorefinery type of applications. We will, for example, modify the composition and content of cellulose, hemicellulose and lignin in transgenic populus trees, and analyze the effect on the bioprocessing properties in a laboratory-scale biorefinery.
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