The aim of this review is to give a summary of natural lignocellulose-degrading systems focusing mainly on animal digestive tracts of wood-feeding insects and ruminants in order to find effective strategies that can be applied to improve anaerobic digestion processes in engineered systems. Wood-feeding animals co-evolved with symbiotic microorganisms to digest lignocellulose-rich biomass in a very successful way. Considering the similarities between these animal gut systems and the lignocellulose-based biotechnological processes, the gut with its microbial consortium can be a perfect model for an advanced lignocellulose-degrading biorefinery. The physicochemical properties and structure of the gut may provide a scheme for the process design, and the microbial consortium may be applied as genetic resource for the up-scaled bioreactor communities. Manipulation of the gut microbiota is also discussed in relation to the management of the reactor communities.
Keywords: Anaerobic digestion; Bioaugmentation; Biomimicry; Biorefinery; Gut; Lignocellulose; Microbiota.