A team at Germany's Fraunhofer Institute for Ceramic Technologies and Systems (IKTS) has developed a new type of sodium-ion ...

UW–Madison biochemistry professor John Ralph has been awarded the forestry industry's top prize, alongside collaborator Wout Boerjan, a professor at Ghent University in Belgium, for their ...

Both lignin and cellulose are found in the rigid cell walls of the xylem cells (those that conduct water) in the primitive plant, Selaginella. Zina Deretsky, National Science Foundation; Selaginella ...

Made from traditional wood, engineered wood is often seen as a renewable replacement for traditional building materials like steel, cement, glass and plastic. It also has the potential to store carbon ...

Scientists from the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) Brookhaven National Laboratory have discovered that a protein responsible for the synthesis of a key plant material evolved much earlier than ...

A new book details how lignin once protected algae from UV radiation, then later in evolutionary time became a structural support for trees. The following is an excerpt from When the Earth Was Green: ...

A novel method to extract lignin could help spin wheat straw into gold. Lignin produced using the new method was color-neutral, odorless and homogenous, an advance that could make this carbon-neutral ...