Amber Dance in Nature:
When Robert Hooke gazed through his microscope at a slice of cork and coined the term ‘cell’ in 1665, he was really looking at just the walls of the dead cells. The squishy contents typically found within would become objects of ongoing study. But for many plant scientists, the walls themselves faded into the background. They were considered passive containers for the exciting biology inside.
“For a long time, the cell wall was really thought to be dead,” says Alice Cheung, a plant molecular biologist and biochemist at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. It wasn’t until the late twentieth century, Cheung says, that scientists began to reveal the cell wall for the vibrant, ever-changing structure it is. Even then, its complex mix of sugar molecules linked into long, branching polysaccharides kept away all but the most intrepid biochemists.
More here.
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