Taxonomic group: plant / Streptophyta
(Phylum: Streptophyta)
Organ / tissue: cell wall
The structure was elucidated in this paperNCBI PubMed ID: 22507135Publication DOI: 10.1046/j.1365-313X.1998.00291.xJournal NLM ID: 9207397Publisher: Oxford: Blackwell Scientific Publishers and BIOS Scientific Publishers for the Society for Experimental Biology
Correspondence: Jarvis MC <mikej
chem.gla.ac.uk>
Institutions: Chemistry Department, Glasgow University, Glasgow, UK, EPSRC Solid-state NMR Service, Durham University, Durham, UK, INRA Laboratoire de Pathologie Végétale, Paris, France
It has been controversial for many years whether in the cellulose of higher plants, the microfibrils are aggregates of 'elementary fibrils', which have been suggested to be about 3.5 nm in diameter. Solid-state NMR spectroscopy was used to examine two celluloses whose fibril diameters had been established by electron microscopy: onion (810 nm, but containing 40% of xyloglucan as well as cellulose) and quince (2 nm cellulose core). Both of these forms of cellulose contained crystalline units of similar size, as estimated from the ratio of surface to interior chains, and the time required for proton magnetisation to diffuse from the surface to the interior. It is suggested that the onion microfibrils must therefore be constructed from a number of cellulose subunits 2 nm in diameter, smaller than the 'elementary fibrils' envisaged previously. The size of these subunits would permit a hexagonal arrangement resembling the cellulose synthase complex.
cellulose, electron microscopy, fiber, xyloglucan, cellulose synthase, onion, quince
Structure type: homopolymer
Location inside paper: p. 183, column 1, paragraph 1
Trivial name: cellulose, β-(1,4)-glucan, cellulose, β-(1,4)-glucan
Compound class: EPS, O-polysaccharide, cell wall polysaccharide, glucan, polysaccharide
Contained glycoepitopes: IEDB_142488,IEDB_146664,IEDB_983931,SB_192
Methods: 13C NMR, proton spin-diffusion
NCBI Taxonomy refs (TaxIDs): 4679,
36610Reference(s) to other database(s): GTC:G75830OM, GlycomeDB:
27885, CCSD:
50051, CBank-STR:4229
Show glycosyltransferases
There is only one chemically distinct structure:
Found 
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