Acetyl Bromide Soluble Lignin (ABSL) Assay for Total Lignin Quantification from Plant Biomass.

Lignin is the second most abundant biopolymer on Earth, providing plants with mechanical support in secondary cell walls and defense against abiotic and biotic stresses. However, lignin also acts as a barrier to biomass saccharification for biofuel generation (Carroll and Somerville, 2009; Zhao and Dixon, 2011; Wang , 2013 ). For these reasons, studying the properties of lignin is of great interest to researchers in agriculture and bioenergy fields. This protocol describes the acetyl bromide method of total lignin extraction and quantification, which is favored among other methods for its high recovery, consistency, and insensitivity to different tissue types ( Johnson , 1961 ; Chang , 2008 ; Moreira- Vilar , 2014 ; Kapp , 2015 ). In brief, acetyl bromide digestion causes the formation of acetyl derivatives on free hydroxyl groups and bromide substitution of α-carbon hydroxyl groups on the lignin backbone to cause a complete solubilization of lignin, which can be quantified using known extinction coefficients and absorbance at 280 nm (Moreira- Vilar , 2014 ).