Doctoral candidate : Maxime Toussaint
University : Université de Lorraine, France
Contract duration : 2013-2016
Research topic — Development of a new tool for the detection of early wood decay.
Research team and supervising scientists —
Research team : UMR 1128 – Dynamique des génomes et adaptation microbienne (DYNAMIC)
PhD supervisors : Cyril Bontemps et Pierre Leblond
_______________________
Context and state of the art — Wood degradation is an important and complex ecological mechanism essential for the good health of the forests and their carbon cycle. However, degradation of the wood material is a major socio-economic problem as wood is more and more involved in human constructions. Biodegradation by microorganisms (fungi and bacteria) is generally considered as the main threat for wood material long-term preservation. Being able to detect and evaluate wood degradation is a current challenge. However, standard tests used in wood industry which rely on mass loss of a piece of wood, after several weeks of degradation by the microorganisms, are time consuming and slow down research work in this area. The growing knowledge on wood biodegradation can be exploited to develop new tools.
Objectives and specific questions to be adressed — We propose to develop biological tools to detect primary wood degradation.
Science and innovation issues — They will constitute valuable alternatives to the current time consuming methods used in wood industries.
Methodological approaches and expected results — The bacteria Streptomyces play the role of helpers of the xylophage fungi during wood degradation processes. We suggest to use their skills to sense degradation components (lignin, cellulose, hemicelluloses) released by fungi to develop new detection tool.
We anticipate that the proposed approach will provide new insight into wood degradation processes with impacts at the ecological level. We also expect biotechnological outcome with delivery of quick and sensitive new tools for degradation assessment of wood treated or not.
