Xylans are polysaccharides found in some plant cell walls and are composed of repeating units of a 5-carbon sugar, xylose. Xylose, together with glucose from cellulose, are the major sugars from lignocellulosic biomass which can be fermented to cellulose-ethanol. Therefore, in the pretreatment step, an efficient process for the liberation of xylose from xylans would be an advantage. Scientists from the Department of Microbiology and Cell Sciences, University of Florida (United States) recently obtained an "aggressively xylanolytic" bacterium which contains genes encoding "XynA1". This region is reported to be part of a xylan utilization regulon (a collection of genes under regulation by the same regulatory protein). The microorganism, Paenibacillus sp. strain JDR-2, is said to have novel metabolic capability which allows utilization of lignocellulosics with minimal pretreatment. The results of the study are published in the journal, Applied and Environmental Microbiology (URL above)..