Harnessing the humble plant cuticle
Compared to beautiful flowers or delicious fruits, a plant’s cuticle – the layered structure that controls the movement of waxes to the surface of leaves and petals – sounds boring.
But in fact, the cuticle is crucial to a plant’s survival. It regulates everything from gas exchange to water permeability, and even controls which insects are able to land on the plant – to pollinate it, for example – and which are repelled.
All these functions depend on the cuticle’s unique layered structure, which has intrigued scientists for years.
Nico Bruns, a professor of macromolecular chemistry at the Adolphe Merkle Institute (AMI) in Fribourg, is coordinating a new four-year research initiative funded by the European Commission, known as PlaMatSu (Plant-Inspired Materials and Surfaces).
The project brings together both students and experienced researchers from Switzerland, Germany and the UK in fields ranging from biology and chemistry to physics. They’re all are interested in understanding how plant cuticles grow and develop, in the hope of creating useful new materials and technologies.
Read more at SWI swissinfo.ch
