[SCAN] Plant polyester suberin: connecting the dots
Vanessa Correia
| When |
03 Jun, 2020
from
12:00 pm to 01:00 pm |
|---|---|
| Where | Zoom Webinar |
| Contact Name | Rita Abranches |
| Add event to your calendar |
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Title: Plant polyester suberin: connecting the dots
Speaker: Vanessa Correia
Abstract: During land colonization, plants acquired the ability to synthesize multifunctional biopolymers in their cell walls to build defensive barriers against pathogens. These evolutionarily optimized biopolymers - cutin and suberin- are the third most abundant class of plant polymers, after cellulose and lignin.
Suberin can be found in specialized tissues such as roots and tubers (e.g. potato peels) as well as in outer barks of some trees (e.g. cork and birch). We showed that suberin can be extracted from different plant sources using a biocompatible ionic liquid as solvent and mild catalyst. Remarkably, this process offers means to control the degree of preservation of the native structure of suberin, essential to ensure that the native biological function is also kept.
Recently, we have applied an extensive cryogenic milling process to cork, enabling the recovery of the in-situ suberin by direct solubilisation. In parallel, by fine-tuning the ionic liquid extraction process we recovered the suberin polymer from cork with the closest native configuration reported to date as dispersed antibacterial nanoparticles (NPs). This strategy allowed the elucidation of the chemistry of suberin, both in-situ (in cryogenically ground cork) and ex-situ (ionic-liquid extracted), using high-resolution one- and two-dimensional solution-state NMR analyses.
We believe that, by fingerprinting the suberin multifunctionality, we can push forward the identification of novel polymer assemblies with significant value-added properties. More next Wednesday!
Zoom webinar - ITQB NOVA Virtual auditorium
