Open questions in plant cell wall synthesis.
Heather E McFarlanePublished in: Journal of experimental botany (2023)
Plant cells are surrounded by strong yet flexible polysaccharide-based cell walls that support the cell while also allowing growth by cell expansion. Plant cell wall research has advanced tremendously in recent years. Sequenced genomes of many model and crop plants have facilitated cataloging and characterization of many enzymes involved in cell wall synthesis. Structural information has been generated for several important cell wall synthesizing enzymes. Important tools have been developed including antibodies raised against a variety of cell wall polysaccharides and glycoproteins, collections of enzyme clones and synthetic glycan arrays for characterizing enzymes, herbicides that specifically affect cell wall synthesis, live-cell imaging probes to track cell wall synthesis, and an inducible secondary cell wall synthesis system. Despite these advances, and often because of the new information they provide, many open questions about plant cell wall polysaccharide synthesis persist. This article highlights some of the key questions that remain open, reviews the data supporting different hypotheses that address these questions, and discusses technological developments that may answer these questions in the future.
Keyphrases
- cell wall
- single cell
- minimally invasive
- cell therapy
- stem cells
- systematic review
- climate change
- induced apoptosis
- health information
- cell proliferation
- machine learning
- bone marrow
- fluorescence imaging
- electronic health record
- big data
- mass spectrometry
- cell death
- social media
- deep learning
- data analysis
- living cells
- cell surface