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 ...

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 ...

The plant cell walls represent the cellular basis for plant architecture and constitute the major component of plant biomass. Formation of multiple agronomic traits, e.g., plant height and mechanical ...

Banding patterns of cellulose increase the stability of plant cell walls, much like the corrugated patterns in cardboard. Penn State biologists developed a method to isolate plant cells and observe ...

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

We still do not understand exactly how antibiotics kill bacteria. However, this understanding is necessary if we want to develop new antibiotics. And that is precisely what is urgently needed, because ...

Scientists reveal new plant cell walls can have significantly different mechanical properties compared to surrounding parental cell walls, enabling cells to change their local shape and influence the ...

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.