Plant cells are surrounded by an intricately structured protective coat called the cell wall. It’s built of cellulose microfibrils intertwined with polysaccharides like hemicellulose or pectin. We ...

UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. -- A plant cell wall's unique ability to expand without weakening or breaking--a quality required for plant growth--is due to the movement of its cellulose skeleton, according to ...

Biomechanics reveals cell wall age properties and how newly born cells can change their local shape and influence the growth of plant organs Scientists reveal new plant cell walls can have ...

Fungi are everywhere, and in many cases, a fungal infection can be eliminated by a person's immune system. But fungal infections can also send long hyphae into the body that are extremely difficult to ...

The protein BICAT3 is one of the most important manganese distributors in plants. If defective, this can have devastating effects on a plant's growth; its leaves grow significantly smaller and it ...

Mesophyll conductance, or the ease with which CO 2 can diffuse through a leaf’s cells before reaching the location where it undergoes carbon fixation, plays a key role in photosynthesis. CO 2 faces ...

In a new study published in Nature Communications, Associate Professor Tuo Wang and his research team from the Department of Chemistry at Louisiana State University revealed the molecular architecture ...

Imagine if our bodies could grow new organs throughout our entire lives. Plants do this constantly, thanks to the tiny, powerful reservoirs of stem cells. But how do these cells know when to divide, ...

A plant cell wall's unique ability to expand without weakening or breaking is due to the movement of its cellulose skeleton, according to new research that models the cell wall. The new study presents ...

Atomic force microscopy time course on the imaged cells. Plots of the stiffness and contact point maps for the dividing cells at different HAD (24 HAD and 48 HAD) for M. polymorpha. (Scale bar, 20 um.