Toward Enhanced Cellulose Biodegradation: Investigating the Relationship Between Cellulose Accessibility and Crystallinity with a Modified Simons' Staining Assay

Cellulose accessibility is one of the key factors impacting hydrolysability of cellulose and biomass. The traditional assay for assessing accessibility is Simons’ staining, a two-color differential stain assay. Recent advances have been made in accessibility measurement. In this work, we combined the traditional Simons’ staining with a cellulase affinity assay to yield a new assessment of cellulose accessibility and pore size distribution. The outcome of a novel chemical pretreatment method with substituted imidazole will be investigated by this new assay for both model cellulose substrates and lignicellulosic biomass.

Besides, cellulose with intermediate crystallinity from different origins were prepared as model substrates to examine the relationship between cellulose accessibility, crystallinity, and hydrolysability.