Start: August 28, 2025 3:30 p.m.
End: August 28, 2025 4:30 p.m.
The Chemistry of Plant Cell Walls and the Importance of pH and pKa’s in understanding Crop Disease
Dr. Dan King
Professor, Department of Chemistry, Taylor University
Thursday, 08/28 @ 3:30 PM
FB 253
The plant cell wall is primarily composed of two types of materials: lignin, which is nearly indestructible by natural means, and a network of polysaccharides mostly comprised of pectin. Crop pathogens, both fungal and bacterial, rely on pectinases to cut away at the cell wall to compromise and gain access to the plant cell. However, plants have two significant defenses to these pathogenic pectinases: esterifying their pectin to render the pectinases ineffective and employing their own pectinase-inhibitor proteins. Thus, the specificity of which crops are susceptible to which diseases is complex and has been difficult to predict. This talk will go on to explore how the esterification and deesterification of pectin alters the pH of cell wall environment which may significantly activate or deactivate key enzymes in this biochemical battleground.