Figure 1

Water constraint-biomass recalcitrance hypothesis. Cartoon depiction of hypothesis stating that the tendency for different plant cell wall polymers to be inhibitory to enzymatic lignocellulose conversion has a strong relation to the overall degree of constraint (or increased order, that is, lower entropy) these polymers put on water in a system by increasing the probability of detrimental interactions such as junction zone formation and the non-productive binding of key enzymes. Structures shown are merely crude representations and do not accurately depict specific structures.