Bacteria make modified cellulose

Cellulose is an abundant biopolymer made of strands of β-1,4-linked glucose units. It provides mechanical strength to plants and biofilms made by bacteria. A team led by Lynette Cegelski of Stanford University and Regine Hengge of Humboldt University of Berlin now reports that the cellulose made by bacteria is a chemically modified version (Science 2018, DOI: 10.1126/science.aao4096). Using solid-state nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy to analyze the . . .