Journal article
Asparagus spears as a model to study heteroxylan biosynthesis during secondary wall development
L Song, W Zeng, A Wu, K Picard, ER Lampugnani, R Cheetamun, C Beahan, A Cassin, A Lonsdale, MS Doblin, A Bacic
Plos One | PUBLIC LIBRARY SCIENCE | Published : 2015
Abstract
Garden asparagus (Asparagus officinalis L.) is a commercially important crop species utilized for its excellent source of vitamins, minerals and dietary fiber. However, after harvest the tissue hardens and its quality rapidly deteriorates because spear cell walls become rigidified due to lignification and substantial increases in heteroxylan content. This latter observation prompted us to investigate the in vitro xylan xylosyltransferase (XylT) activity in asparagus. The current model system for studying heteroxylan biosynthesis, Arabidopsis, whilst a powerful genetic system, displays relatively low xylan XylT activity in in vitro microsomal preparations compared with garden asparagus theref..
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Funding Acknowledgements
This work was funded by a grant from the Australia Research Council to the ARC Centre of Excellence in Plant Cell Walls (WZ, KP, EL, CB, AC, AL, MSD and AB) (CE110001007); ARC DP110100410 (EL and AB), the Victorian Life Sciences Computation Initiative (VLSCI) grant number VR0191 on its Peak Computing Facility at the University of Melbourne, an initiative of the Victorian Government, Australia and the National Natural Science Foundation of China (LS) (grant no. 31170165). The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.