When land plants first emerged from green algae, their cell walls gained new sugar-based polymers that allowed them to grow into towering trees and delicate flowers alike. This project challenges the long-held assumption that cellulose is the sole structural backbone of plant cell walls, proposing instead that a lesser-known polymer called glucomannan plays an essential, previously unrecognised role in holding all land plants together. The research will use advanced solid-state NMR techniques to measure how polysaccharides arrange themselves inside intact cell walls, and genetic methods to alter glucomannan structures and observe the consequences. If the team’s hypothesis is correct, it will rewrite the fundamental principles of how plant cell walls assemble—explaining how they can be both robust enough to support a tree and flexible enough to allow a seedling to bend. This is fundamental science. There is no immediate practical application. But understanding how plants build their cell walls could eventually guide the design of biomass-based materials—stronger fibres, more digestible feedstocks for biofuels, or biodegradable plastics—by revealing nature’s own recipes for combining strength with flexibility.
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When land plants evolved from green algae, their cell walls changed. The walls allow plant cells to expand into many shapes for multicellular growth and development, yet these walls also can provide the strength to support tall trees. To achieve the new and varied functions, land plants acquired additional cell wall polysaccharide components. These polymers interact to build distinct molecular arrangements or 'cell wall architectures', providing remarkably different material properties. Function and evolution of plant cell wall architecture for sustainable technologies (EVOCATE) aims to challenge long-held ideas of plant cell wall structure. By studying a range of land plants across evolution, we will investigate the hypothesis that cellulose and other wall polysaccharides have evolved varied and complementary structures that regulate the interactions of these polysaccharides in plant cell walls. EVOCATE will develop and apply advanced solid-state NMR techniques that allow us to measure polysaccharide structures, conformations and polymer interactions in intact cell walls. Our recent studies indicate previously unrecognised important cell wall functions for the polysaccharide known as glucomannan. We have evidence that this polysaccharide is essential for life of all land plants. We propose that the glucomannans interact with distinct types of cellulose fibrils. We will develop and apply genetic methods to manipulate the glucomannan structures to determine the polysaccharide structure-function relationships in assembly of functional cell wall architectures. EVOCATE will thereby develop new principles and models of plant cell wall assembly. We will demonstrate how multiple and varied architectures of cell walls contribute to the robust yet flexible properties that allow land plants to grow. The techniques and discoveries of EVOCATE will therefore underpin development of new applications of biomass for sustainable technologies. This is an ERC advanced Grant Award.
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