About the Cover
On the cover: Wood is the most abundant biomass produced by plants and essential for human life. To better utilize this renewable resource, it is important to elucidate the biosynthetic pathways of wood components, including cellulose, xylan and lignin. In this issue, Lee et al. (pp. 1659-1672) demonstrate that the secondary wallassociated Arabidopsis PARVUS, a member of glycosyltransferase family 8, is required for the biosynthesis of tetrasaccharide primer sequence, β-D-Xyl-(1→3)-α-L-Rha-(1→2)-a-D-GalA-(1→4)-D-Xyl, located at the reducing end of xylan, which provides novel insights into the mechanisms of xylan biosynthesis. The cover illustration shows the immunolocalization of xylan in secondary walls of fibers and vessels together with the NMR spectra of xylooligosaccharides from wild-type Arabidopsis and parvus plants (inset).
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