ArticleCurrent biology : CB2022
Cryo-electron tomography of the onion cell wall shows bimodally oriented cellulose fibers and reticulated homogalacturonan networks.
Article in Current biology : CB, 2022. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 21 papers.
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21 citing papers in PubMed, 50 citations in OpenAlex.
- Electron microscopy-based three-dimensional subcellular imaging of plant male gametophyte.Journal of integrative plant biology · 2026Review
- Revealing structure and shaping priorities in plant and fungal cell wall architecture via solid-state NMR.Cell surface (Amsterdam, Netherlands) · 2025Review
- Fibrous network nature of plant cell walls enables tunable mechanics for development.Nature communications · 2025Article
- Cell Wall-Based Machine Learning Models to Predict Plant Growth Using Onion Epidermis.International journal of molecular sciences · 2025Article
- Training Generalized Segmentation Networks with Real and Synthetic Cryo-ET data.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2025Article
- Functional, physicochemical properties of sodium carbonate-soluble polysaccharides from the bulbs and foliage leaves of yellow and red onion.Scientific reports · 2024Article
- How Many Glucan Chains Form Plant Cellulose Microfibrils? A Mini Review.Biomacromolecules · 2024Review
- Article
- Top five unanswered questions in plant cell surface research.Cell surface (Amsterdam, Netherlands) · 2024Review
- Structure and growth of plant cell walls.Nature reviews. Molecular cell biology · 2024Review
- A century journey of organelles research in the plant endomembrane system.The Plant cell · 2024Review
- Phosphate starvation regulates cellulose synthesis to modify root growth.Plant physiology · 2024Article
- The extracellular matrix of green algae.Plant physiology · 2023Review
- Cell wall dynamics: novel tools and research questions.Journal of experimental botany · 2023Review
- Polysaccharide assemblies in fungal and plant cell walls explored by solid-state NMR.Structure (London, England : 1993) · 2023Review
- Rapid Synthesis of Cryo-ET Data for Training Deep Learning Models.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2023Article
- Electron tomography unravels new insights into fiber cell wall nanostructure; exploring 3D macromolecular biopolymeric nano-architecture of spruce fiber secondary walls.Scientific reports · 2023Article
- PreparingFrontiers in plant science · 2023Article
- Focused Ion Beam Milling and Cryo-electron Tomography Methods to Study the Structure of the Primary Cell Wall inBio-protocol · 2022Article
- Detecting the orientation of newly-deposited crystalline cellulose with fluorescent CBM3.Cell surface (Amsterdam, Netherlands) · 2022Article
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6 authors at 3 institutions in 2 countries.
Funding
Abstract
One hallmark of plant cells is their cell wall. They protect cells against the environment and high turgor and mediate morphogenesis through the dynamics of their mechanical and chemical properties. The walls are a complex polysaccharidic structure. Although their biochemical composition is well known, how the different components organize in the volume of the cell wall and interact with each other is not well understood and yet is key to the wall's mechanical properties. To investigate the ultrastructure of the plant cell wall, we imaged the walls of onion (Allium cepa) bulbs in a near-native state via cryo-focused ion beam milling (cryo-FIB milling) and cryo-electron tomography (cryo-ET). This allowed the high-resolution visualization of cellulose fibers in situ. We reveal the coexistence of dense fiber fields bathed in a reticulated matrix we termed "meshing," which is more abundant at the inner surface of the cell wall. The fibers adopted a regular bimodal angular distribution at all depths in the cell wall and bundled according to their orientation, creating layers within the cell wall. Concomitantly, employing homogalacturonan (HG)-specific enzymatic digestion, we observed changes in the meshing, suggesting that it is-at least in part-composed of HG pectins. We propose the following model for the construction of the abaxial epidermal primary cell wall: the cell deposits successive layers of cellulose fibers at -45° and +45° relative to the cell's long axis and secretes the surrounding HG-rich meshing proximal to the plasma membrane, which then migrates to more distal regions of the cell wall.
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Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.