Genetic Analysis of Plant Cell Wall Matrix Components

小行星9728779 通俗摘要 植物的细胞壁在植物的生命周期中起着许多保护和生长调节作用。 此外，植物细胞壁材料代表地球上最丰富的可再生生物质来源，并且代表许多产品如木材、纺织品和纸张的原材料。 因此，从基础和应用的角度来看，植物细胞壁合成的研究都具有相当大的兴趣。 植物细胞壁由许多不同的组分组成，如纤维素、果胶和许多次要的多糖和蛋白质组分。 虽然大多数光合作用固定的碳最终被纳入细胞壁的多糖，导致这些复杂的碳水化合物的合成的生物合成途径知之甚少。 该项目利用遗传学方法来解开这些在模式植物生物拟南芥中的复杂性。 该项目将重点关注两种细胞壁突变体mur 2和mur 3，它们影响一类称为木葡聚糖的重要细胞壁交联剂的双合成。 突变体将被用来通过所谓的“定位克隆”获得受影响的基因，这是一种允许仅根据基因在遗传物质中的位置分离基因的程序。 一旦获得了这些参与植物细胞壁多糖合成的基因，它们将被用于确定它们的功能并鉴定高等植物细胞壁生物合成机制的其他组分。 从长远来看，这些知识可能允许细胞壁合成的遗传操作，以改善农业上重要植物的特性。 ***

9728779 Reiter Lay Abstract The cell walls of plants play numerous protective and growth-regulating roles during the life cycle of a plant. Furthermore, plant cell wall material represents the most abundant renewable source of biomass on earth, and represents the raw material for many products such as wood, textiles and paper. Accordingly, the investigation of the synthesis of plant cell walls is of considerable interest both from a basic and applied point of view. Plant cell walls consist of many different components such as cellulose, pectins, and many minor polysaccharide and protein components. Although most of the photosynthetically fixed carbon is ultimately incorporated into the polysaccharides of the cells wall, the biosynthetic pathways leading to the synthesis of these complex carbohydrates are poorly understood. This project utilizes a genetic approach to unravel the complexities of these in the model plant organism, Arabidopsis thaliana. The project will focus on two cell wall mutants, mur2 and mur3, which affect the bisynthesis of a class of important cell wall cross-linkers called xyloglucans. The mutants will be used to obtain the affected genes by so-called "positional cloning", a procedure that permits the isolation of genes based solely on their location within the genetic material. Once these genes involved in the synthesis of the plant cell wall polysaccharides have been obtained, they will be used to determine their function and to identify other components of the cell wall biosynthetic machinery in higher plants. In the long term, this knowledge is likely to permit the genetic manipulation of cell wall synthesis with the goal o f improving the properties of agriculturally important plants. ***