5.3a The Reaction of Cellulose: Cellulolysis
Cellulolysis is essentially the hydrolysis of cellulose. In low and high pH conditions, hydrolysis is a reaction that takes place with water, with the acid or base providing H+ or OH- to precipitate the reaction. Hydrolysis will break the β-1,4-glucosidic bonds, with water and enzymes to catalyze the reaction. Before discussing the reaction in more detail, let’s look at the types of intermediate units that are made from cellulose. The main monomer that composes cellulose is glucose. When two glucose molecules are connected, it is known as cellobiose – one example of a cellobiose is maltose. When three glucose units are connected, it is called cellotriose – one example is β -D pyranose form. And four glucose units connected together are called cellotetraose. Each of these is shown below.
We’ve seen the types of intermediates, so now let’s see the reaction types that are catalyzed by cellulose enzymes. The steps are shown below.
- Breaking of the noncovalent interactions present in the structure of the cellulose, breaking down the crystallinity in the cellulose to an amorphous strand. These types of enzymes are called endocellulases.
- The next step is hydrolysis of the chain ends to break the polymer into smaller sugars. These types of enzymes are called exocellulases, and the products are typically cellobiose and cellotetraose.
- Finally, the disaccharides and tetrasaccharides (cellobiose and cellotetraose) are hydrolyzed to form glucose, which are known as β-glucosidases.
Okay, now we have an idea of how the reaction proceeds. However, there are two types of cellulase systems: noncomplexed and complexed. A noncomplexed cellulase system is the aerobic degradation of cellulose (in oxygen). It is a mixture of extracellular cooperative enzymes. A complexed cellulase system is an anaerobic degradation (without oxygen) using a “cellulosome.” The enzyme is a multiprotein complex anchored on the surface of the bacterium by non-catalytic proteins that serve to function like individual noncomplexed cellulases but are in one unit. The figure below shows how the two different systems act. However, before going into more detail, we are now going to discuss what the enzymes themselves are composed of. The reading by Lynd provides some explanation of how the noncomplexed versus the complexed systems work.
