Tag: Cell Walls

Plant cell walls are important for terrestrial lifestyle, providing support and directing the plant growth. The primary and secondary cell walls differ in their chemical composition and flexibility. Secondary cell walls are less perceptive to industrial degradation processes and therefore pose problems…

Cellulose, the most abundant biopolymer on earth, is an important structural component of the primary and secondary cell wall of plant cells. It is also found in animals (tunicates), oomycetes, and bacteria (Kumar and Turner, 2015). Besides providing support and rigidity in living organisms, cellulose…

Arjen Dijkgraaf | Wednesday, July 4, 2018 (Originally published in C2W Boeken. Translation by Google Translate) In poplars a protein appears to have a bizarre double function: it makes building blocks for amino acids but also regulates the production of lignin. It could be a new way to create…

Here’s a fascinating story; starting with an association study, Xie et al. found that a protein previously identified as an enzyme involved in phenylpropanoid metabolism (specifically, 5-enolpyruvylshikimate 3-phosphate synthase, EPSP) also acts as a transcriptional regulator of this pathway, not only…

Inorganic phosphate (PPi) is a byproduct of many metabolic reactions, including those involved in sucrose, sugar nucleotide, and cellulose biosynthesis. Although PPi is an important phosphate donor and source of cellular energy, high levels of cytosolic PPi are toxic, disrupting the metabolic reactions…

Mesophyll CO2 conductance (gm) is an important factor in determining the concentration of CO2 at the site of fixation in the chloroplast stroma, and as such is crucial for determining photosynthetic capacity.  The mesophyll cell wall provides a major site of resistance to CO2 diffusion into the stroma…

By Peter Ulvskov and Jesper Harholt For the first time in a very long time, a new polysaccharide is reported in plants. Roberts et al. (2018) discovered an arabinoglucan in the moss Physcomitrella patens. This discovery came about not as a result of biochemical characterization of the moss cell…

Plants produce a wide range of polysaccharides in their cell walls, some of which are restricted to certain species. Roberts et al. investigated a moss gene encoding an enzyme that resembles a mixed-linkage (1,3;1,4)-β-glucan (MLG) synthase. When expressed in tobacco, this enzyme produces a novel unbranched,…