In the News
The Energy Frontier Research Center CLSF is phasing down (sunsetting) with a Dept of Energy funding end date in summer 2024, but our collaborative research connections continue to be fruitful. A number of manuscripts are in the works for future publicaiton. In 2024, we are leveraging funding to keep the Center’s analytical lab at Penn State University operational for studies of the cell wall and related research.
CLSF team member Paul Dupree (University of Cambridge) was elected as a new member of the European Molecular Biology Organization (EMBO), an organization of leading researchers that promotes excellence in the life sciences in Europe and beyond. Paul Dupree received this prestigious honor for his work with plant cell wall biosynthesis and assembly. (July 2023)
CLSF received an honorable mention in the EFRC Science Art contest for their poem “The Hierarchy of Cellulose” written by Penn State University PhD student Mica Pitcher with an accompanying image by Laura Ullrich (CLSF Manager). This beautiful poem describes the complexity of the hierarchical structure of cellulose in nature. While highly complex, there still exists some chaos and disorder in the system. A set number of cellulose chains become elementary fibrils, which bundle into microfibrils, and then macroscale fibers in the cell walls of plants. This structure built by nature is highly intricate and interesting, enabling many of the interesting properties and applications of cellulose and lignocellulosic materials. (September 2023)
CLSF Penn State graduate student Sarah Pfaff received an award for her lightning talk “Xylan Plays a Critical Role in Patterned Secondary Cell Wall Formation” presented at the EFRC-Hub-CMS-CCS PI Meeting 2023 on September 19. The winners can be found at the EFRC website (September 2023) Sarah Pfaff also received a 2nd place award for her podium presentation of the same title at Penn State University’s Biology Student Showcase. (October 2023)
The editorial team of Nature Plants chose to highlight CLSF’s research publication (Temple et al. 2022) in their research briefing “Shutting the door on polysaccharide methylation“. “Most polysaccharide biosynthesis and some modifications, including methylation, occur in the Golgi body. Thus, identifying potential transporters of SAM into the Golgi is important for understanding the role of pectin modifications in cell wall structure and function.” (June 2022)
Candace Haigler, Professor of Crop Science and Plant Biology at North Carolina State University, and a longtime CLSF Senior Investigator was elected as an AAAS Fellow for her distinguished research contributions to the fields of cellulose and cotton fiber biology and for broad service to the profession. (January 2022)
Two of CLSF’s Investigators, Daniel Cosgrove and Paul Dupree, were named to Clarivate’s 2021 Highly Cited Researchers list which features researchers who have demonstrated considerable influence in their chosen field through publication of multiple works that have been cited by a significant number of their peers during the last decade. (November 17, 2021)
Collaboration Takes Down Walls
: A team of our early career researchers created this beautiful graphic depicting “Science in the Time of Covid” for an EFRC art contest. The background of each green plant “cell” in this stylized Zoom call is an image taken from the research performed by the corresponding researcher during the time of COVID, representing diverse approaches such as cryo electron microscopy, coarse-grained and atomistic modeling, super-resolution fluorescence microscopy, genetic engineering, cell wall regeneration, nanogold labeling and SEM imaging. As a challenge apropos of COVID, and try to find the mask and the toilet paper in the image! Our Center received a Special Award for this contest entry. (October 19, 2021)
CLSF’s Jochen Zimmer was named a 2021 HHMI Investigator, awarding “outstanding biomedical scientists the time, resources, and freedom they need to explore uncharted scientific territory”. “HHMI selected the new Investigators because they’re thoughtful, rigorous scientists who have the potential to make transformative discoveries over time”, says David Clapham, HHMI’s vice president and chief scientific officer. “We encourage Investigators to follow new directions, learn new methods, and think in new ways,” he says. “This could lead to scientific breakthroughs that benefit humanity.” (September 27, 2021)
A plant cell wall’s unique ability to expand without weakening or breaking—a quality required for plant growth—is due the movement of its cellulose skeleton, according to new research that models the cell wall. The new model, created by Penn State CLSF researchers, reveals that chains of cellulose bundle together within the cell wall, providing strength, and slide against each other when the cell is stretched, providing extensibility. The new study, which appears online May 14 in the journal Science, presents a new concept of the plant cell wall, gives insights into plant cell growth, and could provide inspiration for the design of polymeric materials with new properties. Read PSU news coverage and watch a short video that demostrates the dynamics during stretching.
CLSF’s Director Daniel J. Cosgrove presented a public lecture entitled “Sunshine Into Wood: How Plants Build Their Cell Walls, a Gigaton Source of Renewable Materials and Energy” as part of Penn State University’s Saturday Sustainability Lecture series on February 13. A link to the recording can be found under the lecture square at https://science.psu.edu/frontiers. The lecture starts with the big picture of plant cell walls as a gigaton source of renewable material and energy, provides a look at our current understanding of how the plant cell wall is constructed, and answers questions on how this energy and material is harnessed in society today, and insight into how science progress is aided by big research centers such as the CLSF. (February 13, 2021)
Cellulose Synthase has been featured as “Molecule of the Month” on PDB-101, an Educational portal of RCSB Protein Data Bank. A gorgeous image of cellulose synthase based on the crystallography structure submitted by the Zimmer CLSF group (Purushotham et al. 2020, Science) was created by molecular artist David S. Goodsell. This highlight by Goodsell also includes a striking artistic representation of a plant cell wall. (February 2021)
Figure 4 of Ye et al. 2020
Research led by Enrique Gomez and Esther Gomez at Penn State has identified, for the first time, that cellulose crystals have a preferred orientation relative to the cell wall in plants and may be due to some common consequence of how plants make their cell walls. These findings published in September in Nature Communications may help settle a long-standing debate in the cellulose field — whether crystals within plant cell walls twist — because heaving a preferred orientation suggests that crystals aren’t twisting. These findings came as a result of applying a technique called grazing-incidence wide-angle X-ray scattering (GIWAXS) “developed for materials science and used extensively for the study of thin films, including polymer films” to the study of plant cell walls. Read PSU news story (November 17, 2020)
CLSF member Mei Hong wins the 2021 Nakanishi Prize for her development and use of advanced solid-state NMR to elucidate structure-function relationships of plant cell walls, amyloid proteins and membrane proteins. The prize is to be presented at a ceremony in conjunction with the March ACS meeting. The purpose of the Nakanishi Award is to recognize and stimulate significant work that extends chemical and spectroscopic methods to the study of important biological phenomena. See the list of ACS 2021 National Award winners here (August 17, 2020)
“A Trimer of Plant Synthase Protein Complex” designed by Dr. Abhishek Singh, is based on the developed in silico structure of the plant cellulose synthase.
Dr. Abhishek Singh, a CLSF member at N State, won 1st place for his image, “A Trimer of Plant Synthase Protein Complex” (right), in the NC State Envisioning Research Image contest in the graphics and data visualization category for faculty and staff. This beautiful crossover between science and art is derived from the developed in silico structure of the plant cellulose synthase complex. (August 28, 2020)
CLSF’s James Kubicki discussed honing models on cellulose synthesis and the strength of working in a group of scientists with mixed backgrounds and specialties in the article Inspiration, Not Imitation: Chemists with Energy Research Centers design molecules for natural function in the Summer 2019 Frontiers in Energy Research Newsletter. Since our group started with a good number of scientist that had never worked on the topic of plant cell walls, and continues to add member scientists outside this field, “[We] came in without having the prejudices and biases that people had from reading the literature from the past thirty years… We challenged many of the fundamental assumptions,” Kubicki said, “and one of those was the size of the cellulose microfibril.” Read the full article here (July 12, 2019)
DOE Under Secretary presenting award to Alison Roberts and James Kubicki
Congratulations to all of our members who helped elucidate the structure and function of plant cellulose synthase and cellulose synthesis complex – specficially the groups led by Candace Haigler, James Kubicki, B. Tracy Nixon, Hugh O’Neill, Alison Roberts, Ming Tien, Yaroslava Yingling, and Jochen Zimmer. The U.S. Department of Energy Office of Science recognized this achievement as one of the winners of the “Ten at Ten” Contest in the Scientific Ideas category. These awards mark the ten-year anniversary of the Energy Frontier Research Center (EFRC) program, with ten awardees recognized “that embody the extraordinary impact that the EFRCs have had on people, scientific ideas, and technologies and tools“. Pictured here are Alison Roberts (center) and James Kubicki (right) receiving the award from DOE Under Secretary Paul Dabbar (left) at the 2019 EFRC PI Meeting.
A video about the rewards and challenges of working on our cell wall research was created by a team of our early career scientists at Penn State (Sintu Rongpipi, Dr. Deborah Petrik, and Lynnicia Massenburg) – watch it here: https://youtu.be/ZmKKyKHYYec. (June 18, 2019)
Mother Nature Does It Better: The Frontiers in Energy Research Newsletter (Fall 2018) featured an article written by one of CLSF’s senior PhD candidates at Penn State University, Amin Makerem. This article discusses some advantages and challenges of incorporating biology into the science of energy which several of the EFRCs, including CLSF are undertaking.
Here is an excerpt from the article: “Researchers in CLSF are trying to unravel the process of cellulose formation and growth in plant cell walls… Scientists struggle to get the answers they want because of limitations in characterization technologies, as complex structures are hard to unravel at the atomic level (and biologocal systems have their own environmental sensitivities)… Researchers at CLSF find themselves on the front line to tackle these challenges, and they often invent the technology required for deepening their knowledge on a particular biological process through technological advancements in spectroscopy, microscopy, gene modification, modeling, and reconstitution of biological processes from isolated components.” (December 5, 2018)
Figure from Nanoscale imaging of xyloglucan in plant cell wallsA pioneering study based on high-resolution scanning electron microscopy and novel nanogold tags to resolve xyloglucan conformations and locations at the nanoscale within complex cell walls. The results help us refine our models of growing cell walls and the role of matrix-cellulose interactions. This article Zheng et al. 2018 (The Plant Journal 93(2): 211–226) was featured as the cover image of The Plant Jorunal’s Volume 93 Issue 2 and subject of a research highlight article.
Plant cell walls’ stretch-but-don’t break growth more complex than once thought – Penn State News highlights research from CLSF Cosgrove lab. “A close-up look at the growth of plant cell walls, which largely determines the way a plant grows and takes shape, offers a better understanding of how the tough-but-flexible walls expand.” Zhang et al. (2017) Nanoscale movements in primary cell walls was published in Nature Plants.
Inspiration, Not Imitation: Chemists with Energy Research Centers design molecules for natural function – an article in the Summer 2019 Frontiers in Energy Research Newsletter included comments from CLSF’s James Kubicki about honing models on cellulose synthesis and the strength of working in a group of scientists with mixed backgrounds and specialties. Since our group started with a good number of scientist that had never worked on the topic of plant cell walls, and continues to add member scientists outside this field, “[We] came in without having the prejudices and biases that people had from reading the literature from the past thirty years… We challenged many of the fundamental assumptions,” Kubicki said, “and one of those was the size of the cellulose microfibril.” Read the full article here
Mother Nature Does It Better: The Fall 2018 Frontiers in Energy Research Newsletter featured an article written by one of CLSF’s now PhD alumni , Mohamadamin Makerem. This article discusses some advantages and challenges of incorporating biology into the science of energy that several of the EFRCs, including CLSF are undertaking.
Here is an excerpt from the article: “Researchers in CLSF are trying to unravel the process of cellulose formation and growth in plant cell walls… Scientists struggle to get the answers they want because of limitations in characterization technologies, as complex structures are hard to unravel at the atomic level (and biologocal systems have their own environmental sensitivities)… Researchers at CLSF find themselves on the front line to tackle these challenges, and they often invent the technology required for deepening their knowledge on a particular biological process through technological advancements in spectroscopy, microscopy, gene modification, modeling, and reconstitution of biological processes from isolated components.”
Read an approachable article written by one of our now PhD alumni, Mohamadamin Makarem, that describes one of our avenues of research: Unraveling how nanoscale fiber movements lead to plant growth potentially benefits biofuels – Spotting Tiny Movements When a Plant’s Cell Wall Expands
A recent paper in the journal Cellulose (Oehme et al. 2018) details how researchers from the CLSF have developed computational techniques to gain a greater understanding of how cellulose chains pack together within plant cell walls. Molecular dynamics simulations are combined with quantum mechanical calculations of computational models to produce NMR spectra, which can then be compared to experimental data to validate the different models produced.
Listen to our podcast: Plant Cell Walls, A Symphony of Solid Sunlight: Like Prokofiev’s Peter and the Wolf, this podcast assigns the sound of an instrument to each component of the cell wall and uses the music produced by an orchestra as a metaphor for the plant cell wall and its assembly.
CLSF Researchers featured on the covers of four journals December 2015 – February 2016! See our Research page for more information.
Journal of Experimental Botany’s Special Issue: “From the Nucleus to the Apoplast: Building the Plant’s Cell Wall” (January 2016) features three review articles from our research groups. Daniel Cosgrove reviews the differences between elastic modulus and wall extensibility in the context of cell growth, Charles Anderson addresses progress on pectin synthesis and dynamics research, and Tuo Wang and Mei Hong present how solid-state NMR investigations are contributing to our understanding of spatial arrangements of macromolecules in plant cell walls.
Poetry of Science Contest Winner: “Afterlife of a photon” The 32 Energy Frontier Research Centers (EFRCs) were challenged to convey the wonder of science usingpoetry inspired by a scientific image. Sixteen teams took up the challenge, and a rich variety of images and poems that evoked the complexities, splendor, and awe of energy science. The Office of Science chose the CLSF’s submission “Afterlife of a photon” as the first place winner. “Afterlife of a photon” describes a photon’s perspective of its birth, travel and current bondage in a celluose molecule of wood. Congratulations to Jochen Zimmer (UVA), Daniel Cosgrove (PSU) and Sarah Kiemle (PSU) who wrote the poem and designed the image. Listen to a reading of the poem “Afterlife of a Photon” or View CLSF Winning Entry “Afterlife of a photon” (September 30, 2015)
Ten Hundred and One Word Challenge Winner: Powering your car with sun light
The Ten Hundred and One Word Challenge invited the 46 Energy Frontier Research Centers (EFRCs) to represent their science in images and words, but any descriptions or words could only use the 1000 most commonly used words in the English language, with the addition of one word important to each of the EFRCs and the mission of DOE: energy. Thirty-one teams took up the challenge, and submitted a diverse array of highly creative and visually captivating entries that told the story of the innovative, ground-breaking science performed in the EFRCs. The Office of Science chose the our CLSF’s submission “Powering your car with sun light” as the overall winner View CLSF Winning Entry (July 2013)
Watch our video “Liquid Sunshine to Fuel Your Car”. This is our short, non-technical video about how wood is really stored solar energy and could be used as a biofuel.
last updated May 30, 2024
