Problems Associated With Cell Wall Structural Research

Problems Associated With Cell Wall Structural Research 

There are significant technical problems facing those who wish to study the structure of primary cell walls. An important and sometimes overlooked problem is the purification of the cell walls. Generally, cell walls are purified by being insoluble in buffered salt solutions and in organic solvents. Such purification procedures will undoubtedly remove some of the molecules present in the walls of intact plant tissues, and some of the discarded molecules may have a structural function within the wall. Any molecule solubilized by the wall purification procedures employed is not considered, in this review, as a structural component of the wall. 

The purity of the wall preparations that have been studied can also be questioned. Even though elaborate washing of the wall preparations is customary, the walls may be contaminated by some of the cytoplasmic components which attach to or sediment with the walls following tissue homogenation. Starch grains are an example of a difficult to remove cell wall contaminant. 

The insolubility of the cell wall structural components is the cause of another technical problem. In order to study the structure of the individual wall components, these components must be solubilized and 

It is no easy task to purify a wall component to homogeneity even after the component has been successfully extracted from the wall. The available methods for the purification of polysaccharides are being improved dramatically, but even so, the heterogeneity and complexity of the interconnected cell wall polymers makes this a very difficult problem. 

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