Manipulating lignin deposition

2014 ◽  
Vol 94 (6) ◽  
pp. 1043-1049 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mathias Schuetz ◽  
Carl Douglas ◽  
Lacey Samuels ◽  
Brian Ellis

Schuetz, M., Douglas, C., Samuels, L. and Ellis, B. 2014. Manipulating lignin deposition. Can. J. Plant Sci. 94: 1043–1049. Since lignin represents one of most durable forms of fixed carbon in plant biomass, we hypothesized that increasing root lignin content for crops whose root systems remained in the soil after harvest would elevate the total amount of carbon retained in the soil in Canadian agroecosystems. The immediate goal of this Greencrop project was, therefore, to gain a better understanding of the molecular mechanisms that control deposition of the lignin polymer in plant cell walls, with a view to eventually manipulating the quantity and location of lignin in crop plant root systems. To this end, we examined two classes of Arabidopsis thaliana proteins – transcription factors, which are believed to play crucial roles in regulating lignin biosynthesis, and ATP binding cassette transporters, which are putative lignin precursor transporters. These studies revealed that a complex network of interacting transcriptional regulators is involved in activating and suppressing the expression of key genes required for secondary cell wall deposition and lignification.

Author(s):  
James P. Dobrowolski ◽  
Martyn M. Caldwell ◽  
James H. Richards

2014 ◽  
Vol 111 (5) ◽  
pp. 2029-2034 ◽  
Author(s):  
Takao Araya ◽  
Mayu Miyamoto ◽  
Juliarni Wibowo ◽  
Akinori Suzuki ◽  
Soichi Kojima ◽  
...  

2015 ◽  
Vol 42 (5) ◽  
pp. 460 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stefan Mairhofer ◽  
Craig Sturrock ◽  
Darren M. Wells ◽  
Malcolm J. Bennett ◽  
Sacha J. Mooney ◽  
...  

X-ray microcomputed tomography (μCT) allows nondestructive visualisation of plant root systems within their soil environment and thus offers an alternative to the commonly used destructive methodologies for the examination of plant roots and their interaction with the surrounding soil. Various methods for the recovery of root system information from X-ray computed tomography (CT) image data have been presented in the literature. Detailed, ideally quantitative, evaluation is essential, in order to determine the accuracy and limitations of the proposed methods, and to allow potential users to make informed choices among them. This, however, is a complicated task. Three-dimensional ground truth data are expensive to produce and the complexity of X-ray CT data means that manually generated ground truth may not be definitive. Similarly, artificially generated data are not entirely representative of real samples. The aims of this work are to raise awareness of the evaluation problem and to propose experimental approaches that allow the performance of root extraction methods to be assessed, ultimately improving the techniques available. To illustrate the issues, tests are conducted using both artificially generated images and real data samples.


1991 ◽  
Vol 118 (3) ◽  
pp. 375-382 ◽  
Author(s):  
A. H. FITTER ◽  
T. R. STICKLAND ◽  
M. L. HARVEY ◽  
G. W. WILSON

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