Direct Immunological Detection of Wood Cell Wall Polysaccharides after Microwave-Assisted Ionic Liquid Disruption

We present here a new cell wall polysaccharide analysis method based on the fast and efficient ionic liquid solubilization of wood samples followed by direct immunological detections of their polysaccharide contents. To reduce both the time and the temperature of the analysis, wood powder samples are first totally disrupted in 1-ethyl- 3-methylimidazolium under controlled microwave irradiation. The solubilized extracts are then directly spotted onto nitrocellulose membranes in order to specifically detect their polysaccharide contents with a set of monoclonal antibodies. Compared to the long sequential method classically used for biomass analysis, the technique described in this article allows the simultaneous treatments of higher numbers of smaller samples. It represents an interesting toolkit to rapidly screen various biomass resources for their polysaccharide contents.