Department of Plant Science, McGill University, Macdonald Campus, Lakeshore, Ste-Anne-de-Bellevue, Québec, Canada.
Institut de recherche en biologie végétale, Département de sciences biologiques, Université de Montréal, Montreal, Quebec, Canada.
J Exp Bot. 2019 Jul 23;70(14):3615-3648. doi: 10.1093/jxb/erz281.
The primary plant cell wall is a dynamically regulated composite material of multiple biopolymers that forms a scaffold enclosing the plant cells. The mechanochemical make-up of this polymer network regulates growth, morphogenesis, and stability at the cell and tissue scales. To understand the dynamics of cell wall mechanics, and how it correlates with cellular activities, several experimental frameworks have been deployed in recent years to quantify the mechanical properties of plant cells and tissues. Here we critically review the application of biomechanical tool sets pertinent to plant cell mechanics and outline some of their findings, relevance, and limitations. We also discuss methods that are less explored but hold great potential for the field, including multiscale in silico mechanical modeling that will enable a unified understanding of the mechanical behavior across the scales. Our overview reveals significant differences between the results of different mechanical testing techniques on plant material. Specifically, indentation techniques seem to consistently report lower values compared with tensile tests. Such differences may in part be due to inherent differences among the technical approaches and consequently the wall properties that they measure, and partly due to differences between experimental conditions.
初生植物细胞壁是一种由多种生物聚合物动态调控组成的复合材料，它形成了一个支架，将植物细胞包围起来。这种聚合物网络的机械化学组成调节着细胞和组织尺度上的生长、形态发生和稳定性。为了了解细胞壁力学的动态变化，以及它与细胞活动的相关性，近年来已经部署了几种实验框架来定量测量植物细胞和组织的力学特性。在这里，我们批判性地回顾了与植物细胞力学相关的生物力学工具集的应用，并概述了它们的一些发现、相关性和局限性。我们还讨论了一些探索较少但对该领域具有巨大潜力的方法，包括多尺度的计算力学建模，这将使我们能够在整个尺度上统一理解力学行为。我们的综述揭示了不同机械测试技术在植物材料上的结果之间存在显著差异。具体来说，与拉伸试验相比，压痕技术似乎总是报告出较低的值。这种差异部分可能是由于技术方法本身固有的差异，以及它们所测量的细胞壁特性的差异，部分可能是由于实验条件的差异。
