Biologist finds cell wall construction pathway
Photo courtesy USDAA WUSTL biologist has advanced the understanding of plant cell walls, which are crucial to plants such as cotton, which needs the cell wall to impart elasticity in cotton fibers.Wood with altered properties and cheaper ethanol through more efficient production are two possibilities as a result of a find by a biologist at Washington University in St. Louis. Erik Nielsen, Ph.D., Washington University biologist , has made a discovery published in a recent edition of The Journal of Cell Biology that sheds new light on how some types of complex sugars in plants are directed to the construction of cell walls. More…
Chemists get electrons to ‘break on through to the other side’
David Kilper/WUSTL PhotoChristine Kirmaier (left) and Dewey Holten making adjustments in their sophisticated laser laboratory. Their findings advance the understanding of photosynthesis.In the famous Robert Frost poem, “The Road Not Taken,” the persona, forced to travel one of two roads, takes the one less traveled by, and “that has made all the difference.” Chemists at Washington University in St. Louis and Stanford University, in kinship with Frost, have modified a key protein in a bacterium to move electrons along a pathway not normally traveled by. They got this to happen 70 percent of the time. That yield “makes all the difference.” More…