Latest Cell wall Stories

Grains, vegetables and fruit taste delicious and are important sources of energy. However, humans cannot digest the main component of plants - the cellulose in the cell wall. Even in ruminants, animals that can metabolize cellulose, the digestibility of the cell wall plays a crucial role in feed utilization. Scientists are therefore looking for ways of increasing the digestibility of animal feed, and of utilizing plant cell walls to generate energy. To do this they must first understand how...

By imaging the cell walls of a zinnia leaf down to the nanometer scale, energy researchers have a better idea about how to turn plants into biofuels.In a paper appearing online in the journal Plant Physiology, a team from Lawrence Livermore led by Michael Thelen, in collaboration with researchers from Lawrence Berkeley National Lab and the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, has used four different imaging techniques to systematically drill down deep into the cells of Zinnia elegans.Zinnia...

Wheat plants found to be resistant to Hessian fly larvae may be calling in reinforcements to build up rigid defenses.Christie Williams, a research scientist with the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Agricultural Research Service and a Purdue University associate professor of entomology, found that resistant plants under attack by Hessian fly larvae increased production of surface waxes and cutin, a molecule responsible for rigidity and integrity of epidermal cells. In plants susceptible to...

Between shoot and root, TAU unlocks a new tool for the biofuel industryPlant geneticists are on a determined quest "” to control auxin, a powerful plant growth hormone. Auxin tells plants how to grow, where to lay down roots, how to make tissues, and how to respond to light and gravity. Knowing how to manipulate auxin could thus have enormous implications for the production of biofuel, making plants grow faster and better.A recent publication in the journal PLoS Biology from the laboratory...

Scientists have combined chemistry and biology research techniques to explain how certain bacteria grow structures on their surfaces that allow them to simultaneously cause illness and protect themselves from the body's defenses.The researchers are the first to reproduce a specific component of this natural process in a test tube "“ an essential step to fully understanding how these structures grow.With the new method described, these and other researchers now can delve even deeper into the...

Researchers get up-close look at Pierce's DiseaseLike a band of detectives surveying the movement of a criminal, researchers using photographic technology have caught at least one culprit in the act.In this case, electron microscopy was used to watch a deadly bacteria breakdown cell walls in wine grape plants "“ an image that previously had not been witnessed. The study will be published in Botany."Basically, we've been interested in determining how the bacteria moves," said Dr....

Microscopic ridges contouring the surface of flower petals might play a role in flashing that come-hither look pollinating insects can't resist. Michigan State University scientists and colleagues now have figured out how those form.The result could help researchers learn to enhance plants' pollination success and even could lead to high-grip nanomaterials and "green chemical" feedstocks."Surprisingly, our work on plant surface biochemistry became a birds and bees and flowers...

Scientists identify enzyme that could help grow biofuel crops in harsh environmentsScientists at the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) Brookhaven National Laboratory have identified a novel enzyme responsible for the formation of suberin "” the woody, waxy, cell-wall substance found in cork. While effective at keeping wine inside a bottle, suberin's most important function in plants is to control water and nutrient transportation and keep pathogens out. Adjusting the permeability of plant...

Researchers at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health have for the first time identified the genetic mechanisms involved in the formation and survival of L-form bacteria. Their findings are described in a study published October 6 in the journal PLoS ONE.L-form bacteria, which were first discovered in the 1930s, are morphological variants of classical bacteria that lack a cell wall. Under specialized growth conditions L-form bacteria are capable of forming a typical "fried...

Unraveling a microbe's multilayer defense mechanisms could lead to effective new treatments for potentially lethal fungal infections in cancer patients and others whose natural immunity is weakened.Although not as well known as bacterial infections, such as MRSA and E.coli, fungal infections such as that caused by the yeast Candida albicans can be more serious and lead to a higher death rate. Using mutant forms of the C. albicans yeast which lacked different parts of the yeast cell wall,...