There has been significant recent interest in the commercial utilisation of algae based on their valuable chemical constituents many of which exhibit multiple bioactivities with applications in the ...food, cosmetic, agri- and horticultural sectors and in human health. Compounds of particular commercial interest include pigments, lipids and fatty acids, proteins, polysaccharides and phenolics which all display considerable diversity between and within taxa. The chemical composition of natural algal populations is further influenced by spatial and temporal changes in environmental parameters including light, temperature, nutrients and salinity, as well as biotic interactions. As reported bioactivities are closely linked to specific compounds it is important to understand, and be able to quantify, existing chemical diversity and variability. This review outlines the taxonomic, ecological and chemical diversity between, and within, different algal groups and the implications for commercial utilisation of algae from natural populations. The biochemical diversity and complexity of commercially important types of compounds and their environmental and developmental control are addressed. Such knowledge is likely to help achieve higher and more consistent levels of bioactivity in natural samples and may allow selective harvesting according to algal species and local environmental conditions for different groups of compounds.
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All photosynthetic multicellular Eukaryotes, including land plants and algae, have cells that are surrounded by a dynamic, complex, carbohydrate-rich cell wall. The cell wall exerts considerable ...biological and biomechanical control over individual cells and organisms, thus playing a key role in their environmental interactions. This has resulted in compositional variation that is dependent on developmental stage, cell type, and season. Further variation is evident that has a phylogenetic basis. Plants and algae have a complex phylogenetic history, including acquisition of genes responsible for carbohydrate synthesis and modification through a series of primary (leading to red algae, green algae, and land plants) and secondary (generating brown algae, diatoms, and dinoflagellates) endosymbiotic events. Therefore, organisms that have the shared features of photosynthesis and possession of a cell wall do not form a monophyletic group. Yet they contain some common wall components that can be explained increasingly by genetic and biochemical evidence.
Plant cells are surrounded by a dynamic cell wall that performs many essential biological roles, including regulation of cell expansion, the control of tissue cohesion, ion-exchange and defence ...against microbes. Recent evidence shows that the suite of polysaccharides and wall proteins from which the plant cell wall is composed shows variation between monophyletic plant taxa. This is likely to have been generated during the evolution of plant groups in response to environmental stress. Understanding the natural variation and diversity that exists between cell walls from different taxa is key to facilitating their future exploitation and manipulation, for example by increasing lignocellulosic content or reducing its recalcitrance for use in biofuel generation.
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Cell wall-modifying enzymes have been previously investigated in charophyte green algae (CGA) in cultures of uniform age, giving limited insight into their roles. Therefore, we investigated the
...localisation and specificity of enzymes acting on hemicelluloses in CGA genera of different morphologies and developmental stages.
transglycosylation between xyloglucan and an endogenous donor in filamentous
and
was observed in longitudinal cell walls of young (1 month) but not old cells (1 year), suggesting that it has a role in cell growth. By contrast, in parenchymatous
, transglycanase action occurred in all cell planes. In
and
, the location of enzyme action mainly occurred in regions where xyloglucans and mannans, and to a lesser extent mixed-linkage β-glucan (MLG), were present, indicating predominantly xyloglucan:xyloglucan endotransglucosylase (XET) activity. Novel transglycosylation activities between xyloglucan and xylan, and xyloglucan and galactomannan were identified
in both genera. Our results show that several cell wall-modifying enzymes are present in CGA, and that differences in morphology and cell age are related to enzyme localisation and specificity. This indicates an evolutionary significance of cell wall modifications, as similar changes are known in their immediate descendants, the land plants. This article has an associated First Person interview with the first author of the paper.
Stomatal morphology and function have remained largely conserved throughout ∼400 million years of plant evolution. However, plant cell wall composition has evolved and changed. Here stomatal cell ...wall composition was investigated in different vascular plant groups in attempt to understand their possible effect on stomatal function.
A renewed look at stomatal cell walls was attempted utilizing digitalized polar microscopy, confocal microscopy, histology and a numerical finite-elements simulation. The six species of vascular plants chosen for this study cover a broad structural, ecophysiological and evolutionary spectrum: ferns ( Asplenium nidus and Platycerium bifurcatum ) and angiosperms ( Arabidopsis thaliana and Commelina erecta ) with kidney-shaped stomata, and grasses (angiosperms, family Poaceae) with dumbbell-shaped stomata ( Sorghum bicolor and Triticum aestivum ).
Three distinct patterns of cellulose crystallinity in stomatal cell walls were observed: Type I (kidney-shaped stomata, ferns), Type II (kidney-shaped stomata, angiosperms) and Type III (dumbbell-shaped stomata, grasses). The different stomatal cell wall attributes investigated (cellulose crystallinity, pectins, lignin, phenolics) exhibited taxon-specific patterns, with reciprocal substitution of structural elements in the end-walls of kidney-shaped stomata. According to a numerical bio-mechanical model, the end walls of kidney-shaped stomata develop the highest stresses during opening.
The data presented demonstrate for the first time the existence of distinct spatial patterns of varying cellulose crystallinity in guard cell walls. It is also highly intriguing that in angiosperms crystalline cellulose appears to have replaced lignin that occurs in the stomatal end-walls of ferns serving a similar wall strengthening function. Such taxon-specific spatial patterns of cell wall components could imply different biomechanical functions, which in turn could be a consequence of differences in environmental selection along the course of plant evolution.
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Possessing a cell wall, composed of different types of polymers including polysaccharides, lignins, and proteins, is one of the defining features of plant and algal cells (Carpita and Gibeaut, 1993; ...Neutelings, 2011). It has been instrumental in the ability of a single lineage within the streptophyte algae to successfully transition to life on land in the mid-Paleozoic and subsequently to diversify to form the entire terrestrial macroflora (de Vries and Archibald, 2018). Cell walls provide mechanical support to the plant and constitute a physical protective barrier against the environment (Niklas et al., 2017). They also enable cell-to-cell communication (Tavormina et al., 2015; De Lorenzo et al., 2019; Shi et al., 2019) and are modified in a dynamic manner during plant development and in response to biotic and abiotic stresses (Frankova and Fry, 2013; Le Gall et al., 2015; Cosgrove, 2018; Herger et al., 2019). Their structural organization and composition display a large diversity between species and between organs, and even cells, of a single species (Freshour et al., 1996; Sarkar et al., 2009; Popper et al., 2011)....
Charophytes are the group of green algae whose ancestral lineage gave rise to land plants in what resulted in a profoundly transformative event in the natural history of the planet. Extant ...charophytes exhibit many features that are similar to those found in land plants and their relatively simple phenotypes make them efficacious organisms for the study of many fundamental biological phenomena. Several taxa including
, and
are valuable model organisms for the study of cell biology, development, physiology and ecology of plants. New and rapidly expanding molecular studies are increasing the use of charophytes that in turn, will dramatically enhance our understanding of the evolution of plants and the adaptations that allowed for survival on land. The
series on "Charophytes" provides an assortment of new research reports and reviews on charophytes and their emerging significance as model plants.
Extensins (EXTs) are a family of plant cell wall hydroxyproline-rich glycoproteins (HRGPs) that are implicated to play important roles in plant growth, development, and defense. Structurally, EXTs ...are characterized by the repeated occurrence of serine (Ser) followed by three to five prolines (Pro) residues, which are hydroxylated as hydroxyproline (Hyp) and glycosylated. Some EXTs have Tyrosine (Tyr)-X-Tyr (where X can be any amino acid) motifs that are responsible for intramolecular or intermolecular cross-linkings. EXTs can be divided into several classes: classical EXTs, short EXTs, leucine-rich repeat extensins (LRXs), proline-rich extensin-like receptor kinases (PERKs), formin-homolog EXTs (FH EXTs), chimeric EXTs, and long chimeric EXTs. To guide future research on the EXTs and understand evolutionary history of EXTs in the plant kingdom, a bioinformatics study was conducted to identify and classify EXTs from 16 fully sequenced plant genomes, including Ostreococcus lucimarinus, Chlamydomonas reinhardtii, Volvox carteri, Klebsormidium flaccidum, Physcomitrella patens, Selaginella moellendorffii, Pinus taeda, Picea abies, Brachypodium distachyon, Zea mays, Oryza sativa, Glycine max, Medicago truncatula, Brassica rapa, Solanum lycopersicum, and Solanum tuberosum, to supplement data previously obtained from Arabidopsis thaliana and Populus trichocarpa. A total of 758 EXTs were newly identified, including 87 classical EXTs, 97 short EXTs, 61 LRXs, 75 PERKs, 54 FH EXTs, 38 long chimeric EXTs, and 346 other chimeric EXTs. Several notable findings were made: (1) classical EXTs were likely derived after the terrestrialization of plants; (2) LRXs, PERKs, and FHs were derived earlier than classical EXTs; (3) monocots have few classical EXTs; (4) Eudicots have the greatest number of classical EXTs and Tyr-X-Tyr cross-linking motifs are predominantly in classical EXTs; (5) green algae have no classical EXTs but have a number of long chimeric EXTs that are absent in embryophytes. Furthermore, phylogenetic analysis was conducted of LRXs, PERKs and FH EXTs, which shed light on the evolution of three EXT classes.
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Major differences in primary cell wall (PCW) components between non‐vascular plant taxa are reported. (1) Xyloglucan: driselase digestion yielded isoprimeverose (the diagnostic repeat unit of ...xyloglucan) from PCW‐rich material of Anthoceros (a hornwort), mosses and both leafy and thalloid liverworts, as well as numerous vascular plants, showing xyloglucan to be a PCW component in all land plants tested. In contrast, charophycean green algae (Klebsormidium flaccidium, Coleochaete scutata and Chara corallina), thought to be closely related to land plants, did not contain xyloglucan. They did not yield isoprimeverose; additionally, charophyte material was not digestible with xyloglucan‐specific endoglucanase or cellulase to give xyloglucan‐derived oligosaccharides. (2) Uronic acids: acid hydrolysis of PCW‐rich material from the charophytes, the hornwort, thalloid and leafy liverworts and a basal moss yielded higher concentrations of glucuronic acid than that from the remaining land plants including the less basal mosses and all vascular plants tested. Polysaccharides of the hornwort Anthoceros contained an unusual repeat‐unit, glucuronic acid‐α(1→3)‐galactose, not found in appreciable amounts in any other plants tested. Galacturonic acid was consistently the most abundant PCW uronic acid, but was present in higher concentrations in acid hydrolysates of bryophytes and charophytes than in those of any of the vascular plants. Mannuronic acid was not detected in any of the species surveyed. (3) Mannose: acid hydrolysis of charophyte and bryophyte PCW‐rich material also yielded appreciably higher concentrations of mannose than are found in vascular plant PCWs. (4) Mixed‐linkage glucan (MLG) was absent from all algae and bryophytes tested; however, upon digestion with licheninase, PCW‐rich material from the alga Ulva lactuca and the leafy liverwort Lophocolea bidentata yielded penta‐ to decasaccharides, indicating the presence of MLG‐related polysaccharides. Our results show that major evolutionary events are often associated with changes in PCW composition. In particular, the acquisition of xyloglucan may have been a pre‐adaptive advantage that allowed colonization of land.
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