<
https://www.quantamagazine.org/how-the-diamond-of-the-plant-world-helped-land-plants-evolve-20220719/>
"When Fu-Shuang Li, a biochemist and research scientist at the Whitehead
Institute in Cambridge, Massachusetts, needed some pollen for his research, he
knew just where to go. Every spring, the pitch pine trees ringing Walden Pond
in Concord release clouds of golden pollen that coat the water and gather in
galactic swirls against the shore. Henry David Thoreau, who spent two years
living beside the pond in the 1840s, closes his famous account of the
experience by describing so much pollen, “you could have collected a
barrelful.”
Crouching at the pond’s edge in a black hoodie and sweatpants, Li dipped in a
test tube, drawing out a few hundred milliliters of water, laden with pollen
and whatever else was growing in it. It was far from a barrelful of the stuff,
but it was more than enough for Li’s efforts to study the molecular structure
of pollen’s outer shell. Called sporopollenin, the material that makes up the
shell is so tough it has sometimes been called the diamond of the plant world.
For more than a century, scientists have tried to understand the chemical basis
for sporopollenin’s unparalleled strength. Sporopollenin shields the DNA in
pollen and spores from light, heat, cold and desiccation. Without it, plants
would be unable to live on land. But sporopollenin’s toughness made it tough to
study, even decades after the molecular structures of cellulose, lignin and
other basic plant polymers had been puzzled out. “Nature evolved sporopollenin
to resist any attack,” said Li. “Including by scientists.”
Recently, however, sporopollenin’s defenses may have been overcome. In 2018, Li
and other researchers at the Whitehead, led by the plant biologist Jing-Ke
Weng, published the first complete structure of sporopollenin. Subsequent work
by the team, some of it not yet published, has filled in more details about how
various groups of plants fine-tuned that structure to better meet their needs.
Their proposed structure and the improved view of sporopollenin it offers is
not without controversy, but it has clarified the molecule’s essential role in
helping plants conquer the land."
Via
Future Crunch:
https://futurecrunch.com/good-news-human-rights-spain/
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
