Department of Plant Biology and Biotechnology, Faculty of Life Sciences, University of Copenhagen, Frederiksberg, Denmark.
Front Plant Sci. 2012 Jul 6;3:152. doi: 10.3389/fpls.2012.00152. eCollection 2012.
Plant cell walls display a considerable degree of diversity in their compositions and molecular architectures. In some cases the functional significance of a particular cell wall type appears to be easy to discern: secondary cells walls are often reinforced with lignin that provides durability; the thin cell walls of pollen tubes have particular compositions that enable their tip growth; lupin seed cell walls are characteristically thickened with galactan used as a storage polysaccharide. However, more frequently the evolutionary mechanisms and selection pressures that underpin cell wall diversity and evolution are unclear. For diverse green plants (chlorophytes and streptophytes) the rapidly increasing availability of transcriptome and genome data sets, the development of methods for cell wall analyses which require less material for analysis, and expansion of molecular probe sets, are providing new insights into the diversity and occurrence of cell wall polysaccharides and associated biosynthetic genes. Such research is important for refining our understanding of some of the fundamental processes that enabled plants to colonize land and to subsequently radiate so comprehensively. The study of cell wall structural diversity is also an important aspect of the industrial utilization of global polysaccharide bio-resources.
植物细胞壁在其组成和分子结构上显示出相当大的多样性。在某些情况下，特定细胞壁类型的功能意义似乎很容易识别：次生细胞壁通常用提供耐久性的木质素加固；花粉管的薄壁细胞壁具有使其尖端生长的特殊成分；羽扇豆种子细胞壁的特征是用用作储存多糖的半乳糖醛酸聚糖加厚。然而，更常见的是，支撑细胞壁多样性和进化的进化机制和选择压力尚不清楚。对于多样化的绿色植物（绿藻和轮藻），转录组和基因组数据集的快速可用性、细胞壁分析方法的发展，这些方法需要更少的分析材料，以及分子探针集的扩展，为细胞壁多糖的多样性和出现提供了新的见解以及相关的生物合成基因。这种研究对于深化我们对一些基本过程的理解很重要，这些过程使植物能够在陆地上殖民，并随后全面辐射。细胞壁结构多样性的研究也是全球多糖生物资源工业利用的一个重要方面。
