The Growing Plant Cell Wall: Chemical and Metabolic Analysis - Grand Format

The functional significance of cell walls in many seemingly disparate branches of biology has recently been recognized. They have been shown to play crucial roles in plant growth, morphogenesis, disease-resistance, recognition, signalling, digestibility, nutritior of herbivores, human dietary fibre, and decay. Researchers interested in questions concerning these processes need to know about methods of cell wall analysis.
Until now, however, there has been no book available describing these methods. This book emphasizes the simplest methods available to answer biological questions of current interest, demonstrating that low cost methods can provide valuable information. These are described in bench-top detail and presented in easy-to-follow panels. Dr Fry begins with a brief sketch of the growing cell wall and describes techniques for its isolation and radioactive labelling.
He goes on to deal with components of the cell wall, including polymeric carbohydrates and phenolics, and gives details of their extraction, purification, structure and analysis ; the emphasis here is on chemical aspects. Biological and metabolic processes within the cell wall are covered in the final section. These include biosynthesis, the actions of wall enzymes, wall cross-linking and assembly, wall turnover, plant growth-regulation and wall degradation.
The recent discovery of biologically active wall fragments is also taken into account.