Plant Cell Walls: Figure 1.

Plant cell walls.

Cell walls are important features of plant cells that perform a number of essential functions, including providing shape to the many different cell types needed to form the tissues and organs of a plant. Forming the interface between adjacent cells, plant cell walls often play important roles in intercellular communication. Because of their surface location, plant cell walls play an important r...

Plant Cell Walls

The cell wall is the strong, outermost layer of a plant cell, located external to the plasma membrane. The cell wall often far outlives the protoplast which synthesized it. In cork, for example, the wall serves its particular biological role (physical protection of a tree trunk) for many years after the death of the protoplast. However, the walls of living cells are not inert ‘boxes’ but comple...

Plant cell walls to ethanol.

Conversion of plant cell walls to ethanol constitutes second generation bioethanol production. The process consists of several steps: biomass selection/genetic modification, physiochemical pretreatment, enzymatic saccharification, fermentation and separation. Ultimately, it is desirable to combine as many of the biochemical steps as possible in a single organism to achieve CBP (consolidated bio...

How have plant cell walls evolved?

Visualizing chemical functionality in plant cell walls

Understanding plant cell wall cross-linking chemistry and polymeric architecture is key to the efficient utilization of biomass in all prospects from rational genetic modification to downstream chemical and biological conversion to produce fuels and value chemicals. In fact, the bulk properties of cell wall recalcitrance are collectively determined by its chemical features over a wide range of ...