In plant xylem tissue, there are two types of cells involved in the actual movement of water, tracheid and vessel elements. For tracheid elements, think of the human trachea, the bony and rigid ...

Xylem cells die and their ends break down. This allows them to form long tubes to carry water upwards for photosynthesis. They have thick cell walls to provide support to the plant.

Long-term single-cell imaging and simulations of microtubules reveal principles behind wall patterning during proto-xylem development. Nature Communications , 2021; 12 (1) DOI: 10.1038/s41467-021 ...

It turns out that while plant biologists have studied plant xylem in detail and measured the rate at which it can transport water from roots to leaves, they’ve never thought of using it as a filter.

Wood is a highly ordered arrangement of living, dying and dead cells. Here is a briefing on how tree cells grow and function structurally.

image: Patterns of different polymers in xylem cells. view more Credit: Taku Demura. Animals and plants are distinguished by many features, one of which is the cell wall.

The identification of the gene regulatory network that controls the formation of xylem — the major component of wood — opens up new avenues for manipulating plant biomass. See Article p.571 ...

Elucidating xylem reconnection mechanisms in ... The double knockout mutants of NbXCP1 and NbXCP2 produced using the CRISPR/Cas9 system showed cell digestion defects in differentiated stem ...

They also found that each cell-wall gene in the xylem regulatory network is bound by an average of five different transcription factors from 35 distinct families of regulatory proteins.