During ripening, fleshy fruits undergo textural changes that lead to loss of tissue firmness and consequent softening. It is a common idea that this process is the consequence of cell wall dismantling carried out by different and orderly expressed enzymes. For this purpose, by using a single enzyme family approach many enzymes and related genes have been characterized in different fruits. In th...

Cotton (Gossypium herbaceum L.) fiber development consists of a fiber elongation stage (up to 20 d post-anthesis) and a subsequent cell wall thickening stage. Cell wall analysis revealed that the extractable matrix (pectic and hemicellulosic) polysaccharides accounted for 30-50% of total sugar content in the fiber elongation stage but less than 3% in the cell wall thickening stage. By contrast,...

Marine algae contain large amounts of polysaccharides, notably cell wall structural, but also mycopolysaccharides and storage polysaccharides (Kumar et al. 2008b; Murata and Nakazoe 2001). Polysaccharides are polymers of simple sugars (monosaccharides) linked together by glycosidic bonds, and they have numerous commercial applications in products such as stabilisers, thickeners, emulsifiers, fo...

Degradation of plant cell wall polysaccharides is of major importance in the food and feed, beverage, textile, and paper and pulp industries, as well as in several other industrial production processes. Enzymatic degradation of these polymers has received attention for many years and is becoming a more and more attractive alternative to chemical and mechanical processes. Over the past 15 years,...

The plant cell wall has many significant structural and physiological roles, but the contributions of the various components to these roles remain unclear. Modification of cell wall properties can affect key agronomic traits such as disease resistance and plant growth. The plant cell wall is composed of diverse polysaccharides often decorated with methyl, acetyl, and feruloyl groups linked to t...

Cell walls, which constitute the bulk of plant biomass, vary considerably in their structure, composition, and architecture. Studies on plant cell walls can be conducted on both native and pre-treated plant biomass samples, allowing an enhanced understanding of these structural and compositional variations. Here glycome profiling was employed to determine the relative abundance of matrix polysa...

Cell walls, which constitute the bulk of plant biomass, vary considerably in their structure, composition, and architecture. Studies on plant cell walls can be conducted on both native and pre-treated plant biomass samples, allowing an enhanced understanding of these structural and compositional variations. Here glycome profiling was employed to determine the relative abundance of matrix polysa...

Nascent pectin and glucuronoxylan were prepared from membrane-bound enzymes obtained from pea epicotyls. They had previously been shown to exhibit a proteinand pH-dependent pattern of binding to cell wall ghosts and to xyloglucan extracted from cell walls prepared from pea epicotyls; maximum binding required a pH of 3-4, and the presence of cell wall proteins, namely assemblins. To determine wh...

The secretion of cell wall polysaccharides through the trans-Golgi network (TGN) is required for plant cell elongation. However, the components mediating the post-Golgi secretion of pectin and hemicellulose, the two major cell wall polysaccharides, are largely unknown. We identified evolutionarily conserved YPT/RAB GTPase Interacting Protein 4a (YIP4a) and YIP4b (formerly YIP2), which form a TG...

Plant cell walls are composed mainly of polysaccharides and production of biofuels from biomass requires decomposition of the polymers. Many of the polymers are recalcitrant to degradation and they are composed of sugars that are not optimal for fermentation. Better understanding of the biosynthesis of the cell wall polysaccharides may enable development of crops with improved properties as bio...