FOR 30 years, biologists have puzzled over how plants make cellulose, the
fibrous polymer in trees, paper and cotton. Now researchers have isolated the
gene for the enzyme that makes cellulose in mustard.
The team tracked down the gene by analysing mutant plants with weak shoots
that swell abnormally. Tony Arioli at the Australian National University in
Canberra and his colleagues report in Science (vol 279, p 717) that the
defective gene encodes a crucial enzyme in the assembly of cellulose from
simpler carbohydrates.
