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The cell walls surrounding plant cells are composed of tightly-interwoven polymer networks whose composition and structure vary between species, development stage, tissue and organ. We used a multi-approach battery of imaging and biochemistry methods on hand-dissected tissue specimens to investigate the cell walls in the outer layers of the wheat grain (Recital cultivar) at a series of developmental stages. Unexpected results were observed for external tissues 1) the presence of lignins at early growth stages 2) changes in cell-wall properties likely due to covalent crosslinking between cell-wall polymers. Our findings suggest that major structural cell-wall changes occur late into development in the outer pericarp and that these changes could be part of a system that arrests grain growth and thus determines grain size.

Partenaires

IJPB INRA Versailles, GDEC INRA Clermont-Ferrand, IATE INRA Montpellier

Publication

Anne-Laure Chateigner-Boutin, Catherine Lapierre, Camille Alvarado, Arata Yoshinaga, Cécile Barron, Brigitte Bouchet, Bénédicte Bakan, Luc Saulnier, Marie-Françoise Devaux, Christine Girousse, Fabienne Guillon. 2018. Ferulate and lignin cross-links increase in cell walls of wheat grain outer layers during late development. Plant Science 276:199-207. DOI : 10.1016/j.plantsci.2018.08.022