GoKawiilAs one of the main components of plant biomass, lignin ought to be a great asset: an abundant, renewable resource that can potentially be turned into many industrial chemicals1. However, to become a productive feedstock, lignin must not only be extracted from biomass, but also be converted into defined products with a level of control close to that achieved in petrochemical refining. The problem is that lignin processing produces messy mixtures of compounds, only some of which can typically be used. Writing in Nature, Mains et al.2 report a carefully choreographed sequence of chemical and biological steps that converts lignin into adipic acid — a key precursor of nylon — at yields greater than those of previously reported routes for converting lignin into single products. The findings reveal a potential general strategy for making valuable chemicals from lignin: not simply breaking its polymeric molecules apart, but transforming the resulting mixtures into specific, useful products.
doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-026-01586-6
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Competing Interests The authors declare no competing interests.
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