Viscin Cells in the Dwarf Mistletoe Arceuthobium ... - Davidsonia

Davidsonia 17:3 101
plant cuticles ever published. As a reference, it is invaluable, as it will
serve as a comparative index of cuticle structures from a staggering
number of plants.
Cutin is a polyester, made up of monomers derived from C16 and
C18 fatty acids. However, like many plant polymers such as lignin,
the three dimensional structure of the assembled polymer is still a
mystery. Chapter 3 is a succinct description of what is known about
the properties and structure of the cutin biopolymer matrix. This
chapter describes analytical techniques in polymer chemistry that are
not familiar to the typical plant biologist, nevertheless, even a casual
read provides an interesting overview of this fascinating polymer
matrix. It is important to mention here that the authors do not lose
sight of the biological relevance of the physico-chemical properties
that have been described using advanced techniques such as solid state
NMR. For example, the elasticity of tomato fruit cuticles is important
to prevent fruit cracking, which is a costly disorder in tomato crops.
Chapters 4 and 5 provide a careful review of the composition and
biosynthesis of cuticular waxes, respectively. With a special emphasis
on the experimental approaches used to determine these compositions,
chapter 4 provides the reader not only with a very useful review of
available methodologies, but also an extensive and critical examination
of the current literature describing the composition of waxes in plants
studied to date. The biosynthetic pathways responsible for the waxes
are described in the subsequent chapter providing an extensive and upto-date
review of the genes and enzymes involved in these pathways.
As well, a thoughtful discussion on the little-understood secretion and
transport of the waxes from the presumed site of biosynthesis to the
plant surface is also provided.
The optical properties of the plant surface are potentially important
to the plant with respect to UV radiation. Chapter 6 describes the current
methods available for studying surface optics with special reference to
the plant cuticle.
Chapters 7 and 8 describe the cuticle with respect to its permeability
to both lipophyllic and polar compounds. The issue of transport across
the cuticle is relevant to not only fundamental biological questions