So I was working in So Cal for a heavy engineering contractor, Fluor, working mostly nuclear projects (uranium gas centrifuge project, PUREX process...) when some guys in S. San Francisco started editing the genes in bugs. Fluor decided that this could lead to bioprocesses to make plastics, and I was asked to be on the team building knowledge and sales credibility. I sold our first job, and was project manager. We installed control systems on the S. San Fran company's first fermentors. Kind of weird to think that a 10 liter fermentor had a billion dollars of product in it! But the bioprocess to plastics thing never developed. I went off to grad school. Went to work for DuPont, where we made fluoroproducts, like Teflon(R). Change of management: new managers announced "We have a cost crisis". The next week "We have a cost catastrophe!". I was an internal consultant, and the way the company layered burden costs onto me I figured that I was costing the business $479,000! So I asked my boss to find another business. Got assigned to Biochemical Science and Engineering. Making plastics from bioprocesses!

Some colleagues of mine had developed a process to have bugs produce 1,3 propanediol. For non-chemists, that's 3 carbons with an alcohol group at each end. If you react this with terepthalic acid, you get polyester. (Petroleum based polyester uses 1,4 butanediol, which has 4 carbons. 1,3 propanediol makes polyester that's more flexible and has better wear properties). This is Sonora(R) polyester.

It's interesting that your cellulose is too good to be cost effective. Is it fibrous enough to make thread and fabric?