Predictable service life is crucial for wood as a construction material and preventing decay to maximise service life is beneficial. Hence, investigations of the mechanisms employed by decay fungi in their attempt to degrade treated and untreated wood is important. For wood in service brown rot fungi are of great importance since: 1) they preferentially attack coniferous wood species which are the primary species used in structural wood in the Northern hemisphere, 2) brown rot fungi cause significant strength reduction at low mass loss. “The full extent of feedback mechanisms regulating brown rot decay is not known. However, it is generally agreed that brown rot fungi utilize a nonenzymatic system that rapidly depolymerizes cell wall components in early stages of decay, prior to degradation by traditional cellulases and hemicellulases” (Skrede et al. 2019). It is accepted that modified wood provides increased service life compared to untreated wood, but the exact mechanisms employed by the different treatments against decay fungi is still under investigation. The aim of this review was to provide an update on gene expression studies on furfurylated wood. In addition supplementary methods to further understand fungal decay mechanisms are summarised.
Keywords: fungal decay, gene expression, furfurylated wood
Authors
Gry Alfredsen
Norwegian Institute of Bioeconomy Reserach, Ås, Norway
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