Christopher Kesten says: “Cellulose is the main component of the plant cell wall and constitutes the bulk of plant biomass. As such, it is one of the most important natural resources for our society. Indeed, cellulose provides, directly and indirectly, important components of our daily life: food, animal feed, fibres and clothing, building material and fuel. The cellulose polymers are built from glucose units that are linked via glycosidic bonds and that can align with each other to form strong microfibrils. This project is aimed at engineering the proteins that make cellulose to change its molecular composition: to exchange glucose with other sugars. Such engineering holds groundbreaking possibilities to tailor-make cellulosic materials with diverse physical properties that can be specifically adapted for a vast number of applications, such as custom-made filter materials or bioactive gels.”