Predicting cell wall mechanics from structure in a materials engineering approach to plant growth

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The project fosters a novel, interdisciplinary approach to understanding how the structure of plant cell walls determines their mechanical properties. Such understanding requires combining biological and engineering approaches and will illuminate how plants grow and produce cells and organs with particular shapes. This is scientifically important but is also important for industries depending on specialised cell shapes such as those of cotton and wood fibres. Our work will improve our understanding of how wall structure determines fibre and other cell shapes and give us tools which can be used to understand how final wall structure determines the fibre mechanics on which industrial users depend.