New insights into plant cell walls by vibrational microspectroscopy.

Abstract

Vibrational spectroscopy provides non-destructively the molecular fingerprint of plant cells in the native state. In combination with microscopy, the chemical composition can be followed in context with the microstructure, and due to the non-destructive application, in-situ studies of changes during, e.g., degradation or mechanical load are possible. The two complementary vibrational microspectroscopic approaches, Fourier-Transform Infrared (FT-IR) Microspectroscopy and Confocal Raman spectroscopy, are based on different physical principles and the resulting different drawbacks and advantages in plant applications are reviewed. Examples for FT-IR and Raman microscopy applications on plant cell walls, including imaging as well as in-situ studies, are shown to have high potential to get a deeper understanding of structure-function relationships as well as biological processes and technical treatments. Both probe numerous different molecular vibrations of all components at once and thus result in spectra with many overlapping bands, a challenge for assignment and interpretation. With the help of multivariate unmixing methods (e.g., vertex components analysis), the most pure components can be revealed and their distribution mapped, even tiny layers and structures (250 nm). Instrumental as well as data analysis progresses make both microspectroscopic methods more and more promising tools in plant cell wall research.

Plant phenotyping relevance

植物細胞壁の構造・化学組成を対象とする振動顕微分光法（FT-IRおよび共焦点ラマン）の植物への応用、画像化、データ解析を方法論としてレビューしており、植物状態の取得・抽出法が中心である。

Code and data availability

The review mentions an author-established public spectral database of plant cell wall reference components and spectra, hosted at bionami.at/spectra.html, which directly supports the paper's vibrational microspectroscopy measurements and band-assignment analysis. No code, models, or image datasets with explicit public-