Methods to quantify primary plant cell wall mechanics

Abstract

The primary plant cell wall is a dynamically regulated composite material of multiple biopolymers that forms a scaffold enclosing the plant cells. The mechanochemical make-up of this polymer network regulates growth, morphogenesis, and stability at the cell and tissue scales. To understand the dynamics of cell wall mechanics, and how it correlates with cellular activities, several experimental frameworks have been deployed in recent years to quantify the mechanical properties of plant cells and tissues. Here we critically review the application of biomechanical tool sets pertinent to plant cell mechanics and outline some of their findings, relevance, and limitations. We also discuss methods that are less explored but hold great potential for the field, including multiscale in silico mechanical modeling that will enable a unified understanding of the mechanical behavior across the scales. Our overview reveals significant differences between the results of different mechanical testing techniques on plant material. Specifically, indentation techniques seem to consistently report lower values compared with tensile tests. Such differences may in part be due to inherent differences among the technical approaches and consequently the wall properties that they measure, and partly due to differences between experimental conditions.

Keywords: Acoustic microscopy; fracture; indentation; mechanical modeling; microfluidics; morphogenesis; multiscale models; plant cell mechanics; primary cell wall; tension test.