The results are relevant to the fundamental mechanisms by which plants take shape and withstand the forces imposed on them by their environment. Plant Cell Walls Plant cell walls are among the most sophisticated structural materials known to man. And in the form of wood, plant cell walls are the most abundant material in the living world. We are an interdisciplinary team of biologists, chemists and physicists working on the structure of the plant cell wall and its constituent polymers, such as cellulose, pectin and lignin. Our long-term objective has been to understand how the strength and resilience of the cell wall is derived from its molecular architecture, but recently we have become more concerned with the role of cell walls in the growth and development of plants.
Applied projects are on an equal footing with fundamental science.
Much of our present research uses spectroscopic methods. We were one of the first groups to apply solid-state NMR spectroscopy to plant materials, not only to investigate polymer structures and conformations but also to probe the rigidity of individual polymers within the composite network that comprises the cell wall. We have pioneered the use of this method to measure molecular rigidity in living plant materials as well as in cell walls extracted from them. This information complements what can be obtained by electron microscopy and has allowed us to make exciting progress with the architecture of cellulose fibres. Cellulose looks simple - just a linear polymer of glucose.