Tissue-specific processes during cell wall formation in flax fiber

Abstract

Flax (Linum usitatissimum L.) phloem fiber elongation is separate from secondary cell wall formation. The indicator for the developmental transition is the manually determinable “snap point”. Sharp increase in the mechanical strength at certain level of flax stem. It helped to characterize fiber-specific and stage-specific processes: soluble galactan turnover (revealed in pulse-chase experiments), specialized Golgi vesicle accumulation, and cell wall postsynthetic modification.

Keywords:

• Cell wall
• galactan
• Linum usitatissimum
• plant fiber
• postsynthetic modification
• pulse-chase experiment

Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the program MCB RAS, by grants 03-04-96223 and 03-3.10-232 of RFBR-Tatarstan scientific program. We thank Dr. J. Paul Knox for providing us with the LM5 antibody.