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

该项目培养了一种新颖的跨学科方法来理解植物细胞壁的结构如何决定它们的机械性能。这样的理解需要结合生物和工程方法，并将阐明植物如何生长和产生具有特定形状的细胞和器官。这在科学上是重要的，但对依赖于特殊细胞形状的行业（如棉花和木材纤维）也很重要。我们的工作将提高我们对壁结构如何决定纤维和其他细胞形状的理解，并为我们提供可用于理解最终壁结构如何决定工业用户所依赖的纤维力学的工具。

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.