Toshiaki Umezawa

The paper analyzes engineered rice lines to show that ferulate cross-linking significantly affects lignocellulose structure and biomass properties more than lignin composition changes.

This study engineers rice to produce eudicot-like lignin by disrupting grass-specific lignin modification pathways, revealing the roles of p-coumarate and tricin in lignin structure and function.

This study investigates the role of C4H in rice lignin biosynthesis, showing it is essential but dispensable due to the compensatory PTAL pathway.

The paper shows that disrupting CAld5H and PMT genes in rice eliminates syringyl lignin, revealing a grass-specific pathway for p-coumarate conjugates and lineage-dependent lignin polymerization.