Microorganisms capable of degrading cellulose are widely distributed in nature and diverse strategies are thus employed to achieve the efficient deploymerization of lignocellulose. Cytophaga hutchinsonii belonging to the phylum Bacteroidetes has a strong ability to hydrolyze cellulose, but the involved mechanism seems to be different either from the known extracellular noncomplexed cellulase system or from cellulosome system. It is speculated that it possesses a third mode of cellulose utilization with the degradation system tightly associated with cells. The present review will briefly introduce the potentially novel strategy employed by C. hutchinsonii to assimilate cellulose.
