Motivation
Biomass is any organic matter—wood, straw, seaweed, animal wastes etc. — and it constitutes a significant renewable source of organic material and energy. It is highly abundant; in fact the dominant component of plant biomass, cellulose, is the most common compound (by mass) in the biosphere. One effective way to exploit biomass as feedstock for sustainable industries is to convert the cellulose into small soluble sugars. These sugars may in turn be fermented into ethanol by yeast, or used to feed microbes that have been genetically modified to produce other commodities including precursors for e.g. bioplastic.