Figure 2

Occurrences of plant biomass degradation modules (PDMs) in organisms using different degradation paradigms. The predicted occurrences of the PDMs M1 to M5 in the genomes of 38 known lignocellulose degraders are indicated by different colors. Each PDM was predicted to be present or absent from a genome, depending on its genome-specific weight, that is, the degree of completeness for its protein families. Two major cellulose degradation paradigms – the free enzyme and cellulosome-based strategies – were assigned to the organisms according to the literature. Assignments can be ambiguous; for example, Clostridium thermocellum seems to be able to use mixed strategies [47]. No PDM was exclusively associated with these two paradigms, including M5, which, in addition to the cohesin and dockerin domains of cellulosomes, also included non-cellulosomal protein families (Table 3).