Abstract text: Stomata leverage changes in turgor pressure to alter their shape, modulating gas exchange between leaf and environment. The de facto explanation for how this occurs centres around their unique arrangement of cellulose microfibrils, thought to wrap around the guard cell, which endow their walls with anisotropic stiffness and thus promote elongation under turgor. While intuitive, this mechanism has failed to link changes to stomatal function with alterations to cell wall polymers e.g., by molecular genetics or enzymes.

I hypothesise that this failure originates from its idealised representation of the structure and arrangement of microfibrils, resulting in a limited conception of the cell wall’s function. To remedy this, I am seeking a more complete picture of both the cell-scale microfibril arrangement and the cell wall’s nanostructure by combining atomic force microscopy and polarised light microscopy. The methods I have developed to do so are applicable to a wide range of tissues, potentially granting access to the orientation and anisotropy (i.e., architecture) of cellulose microfibrils of any tissue accessible to optical microscopy.