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

该项目促进了一种新的、跨学科的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学和工程学的方法，并将阐明植物是如何生长和产生特殊形状的细胞和器官的。这在科学上很重要，但对于依赖特殊细胞形状的行业也很重要，例如棉花和木纤维的细胞形状。我们的工作将提高我们对墙体结构如何决定纤维和其他细胞形状的理解，并为我们提供工具，用于理解最终的墙体结构如何决定工业用户所依赖的纤维机制。

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.