Details of Grant 

EPSRC Reference:	EP/D040221/1
Title:	Pressure probe development for material property measurements on Arabidopsis thaliana cells
Principal Investigator:	Pritchard, Dr J
Other Investigators:	Thomas, Professor CR
Researcher Co-Investigators:	Dr C Wang
Project Partners:
Department:	Chemical Engineering
Organisation:	University of Birmingham
Scheme:	Postdoctoral Mobility PreFEC
Starts:	12 November 2005	Ends:	11 November 2006	Value (£):	72,696
EPSRC Research Topic Classifications:	Bioprocess Engineering
EPSRC Industrial Sector Classifications:	Food and Drink
Related Grants:
Panel History:
Summary on Grant Application Form
Plant cell mechanics are vitally important in understanding how plants grow, and how fruit and vegetables should be handled and processed to provide high quality foods. The mechanical properties of plant tissues depend not only on the elasticity and strength of the walls of the cells of which they are composed, but on the high pressure (turgor) inside the cells, which makes them and the tissues rigid. Clearly it is important to know about the turgor within cells, and any water flows between them. An excellent tool for studying this is the pressure probe. A small micropipette can be inserted into a cell, in order to measure the pressure, study water flows in response to cell volume changes, and to sample the sap within the cell for analysis. It is now proposed to make mathematical models of the cell behaviour during such experiments, so that the cell wall elasticity and other cell mechanical properties can be estimated. The elasticity of the wall must depend on its chemical composition and structure, and methods are needed to investigate this link. The pressure probe is a convenient starting point because it readily available, relatively easy to use, and with further data analysis, can provide the needed information. The pressure probe is most conveniently used on cells in whole tissues. However, the ideal situation would be to be able to experiment on single cells growing in suspension, i.e. in a solution of nutrients. Although methods do exist to establish suspension cultures of plant cells, they are generally specific to a particular species or even strain. Furthermore, such suspensions often contain aggregates rather than single cells. The aim is to refine these methods to obtain single cell cultures on the model plant Arabidopsis thaliana. Arabidopsis thaliana is chosen because its genone is known, there are many molecular resources avaiable including many lack of function mutants. Charaterised mutants of cell wall biochemistry would be the subject of a follow on study. Cell wall mutants will be put into suspension culture as single cells usind the developed methods. Cell wall elasticity will be measured using the pressure probe. This data will contribute to uncovering the relationship between wall elasticity, composition and structure.Dr CX Wang is a material scientist and mathematical modeller. This Postdoctoral Mobility grant will permit the transfer of his expertise into the laboratory of Dr J Pritchard, who is a pressure probe expert. Whilst establishing single cell suspension cultures of Arabidopsis thaliana cells, and using the pressure probe, Dr Wang will learn about plant cell physiology and biochemistry. This learning will be an excellent complement to his existing knowledge and skills, and give him the base for further interdisciplinary studies in this field.
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Organisation Website:	http://www.bham.ac.uk