Multiscale Engineering of Wood for a Sustainable Future

Wood has served humanity by providing tools, fuels, and engineering materials since the Paleolithic period. The composite and hierarchical structure of wood, which is a direct embodiment of stored solar energy and sequestered CO2, exhibits versatile utility. Top-down approaches have enabled recent advances in the engineering, functionalization, and conversion of wood and its derivatives. Its inherent hierarchical structure can be modified by physical and 25chemical methods. Moreover, ‘bottom-up’, targeted genetic engineering approaches have facilitated the modification of wood from molecular scale to nano-, micro-, and bulk scales. Herein, the strategies for manipulating the emergent properties of wood at several scales are reviewed to present sustainable solutions for meeting the current and future demands for materials and energy.