Chemical Engineering Commons^™

Quartz Crystal Microbalance Investigation Of Cellulosome Activity From Clostridium Thermocellum On Model Cellulose Films, Shanshan Zhou

Theses and Dissertations--Chemical and Materials Engineering

The cost of deconstructing cellulose into soluble sugars is a key impediment to the commercial production of lignocellulosic biofuels. The use of the quartz crystal microbalance (QCM) to investigate reaction variables critical to enzymatic cellulose hydrolysis is investigated here, extending previous studies of fungal cellulase activity for the first time to whole cell cellulases. Specifically, the activity of the cellulases of Clostridium thermocellum, which are in the form of cellulosomes, was investigated. To clearly differentiate the activity of free cellulosome and cell-bound cellulosome, the distribution of free cellulosome and cell-bound cellulosome in crude cell broth at different growth stages …