Flexible Pectin Nanopatterning Drives Cell Wall Organization in Plants

Plant cell walls are abundant sources of materials and energy. Nevertheless, cell wall nanostructure, specifically how pectins interact with cellulose and hemicelluloses to construct a robust and flexible biomaterial, is poorly understood. X-ray scattering measurements are minimally invasive and can...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:JACS Au 2024-01, Vol.4 (1), p.177-188
Main Authors: Siemianowski, Oskar, Rongpipi, Sintu, Del Mundo, Joshua T., Freychet, Guillaume, Zhernenkov, Mikhail, Gomez, Enrique D., Gomez, Esther W., Anderson, Charles T.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
BASIC BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES
carbohydrates
Cell wall nanostructure
cells
cellulose
chemical structure
pectin
scattering
tender resonant X-ray scattering
xyloglucan
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Summary:Plant cell walls are abundant sources of materials and energy. Nevertheless, cell wall nanostructure, specifically how pectins interact with cellulose and hemicelluloses to construct a robust and flexible biomaterial, is poorly understood. X-ray scattering measurements are minimally invasive and can reveal ultrastructural, compositional, and physical properties of materials. Resonant X-ray scattering takes advantage of compositional differences by tuning the energy of the incident X-ray to absorption edges of specific elements in a material. Using Tender Resonant X-ray Scattering (TReXS) at the calcium K-edge to study hypocotyls of the model plant, Arabidopsis thaliana, we detected distinctive Ca features that we hypothesize correspond to previously unreported Ca-Homogalacturonan (Ca-HG) nanostructures. When Ca-HG structures were perturbed by chemical and enzymatic treatments, cellulose microfibrils were also rearranged. Moreover, Ca-HG nanostructure was altered in mutants with abnormal cellulose, pectin, or hemicellulose content. Our results indicate direct structural interlinks between components of the plant cell wall at the nanoscale and reveal mechanisms that underpin both the structural integrity of these components and the molecular architecture of the plant cell wall.
ISSN:2691-3704
2691-3704
DOI:10.1021/jacsau.3c00616