Breakout Session II
Cell Wall Structure
Nicholas Carpita Nicholas Carpita is a professor of plant biology at Purdue University.
His research area is the structure and biosynthesis of the plant cell wall, gene discovery in cell wall biology,
and improvement of grasses as lignocellulosic bioenergy crops. His research focuses on the biochemistry and
molecular biology of cell wall formation during cell development. Current programs include the biosynthesis of
the maize mixed-linkage (1→3),(1→4)ß-D-glucan in vitro, characterization of the cellulose synthase and
cellulose synthase-like genes of cereals, characterization of cell wall mutants in Arabidopsis, cellular
aspects of phloem fiber initiation and development in flax, determinants of cell-cell adhesion and wall
softening during fruit ripening, determinants of membrane-wall adhesion in response to osmotic stress, novel
inducible promoters in plants, and fourier transform infrared spectroscopy as a high through-put screen for
cell wall mutants in arabidopsis and maize.
John Ralph John Ralph is a research chemist at the USDA-Agricultural Research
Service’s Dairy Forage Research Center in Madison, WI, and a professor in the Department
of Biological Systems Engineering, University of Wisconsin–Madison. His specialty is in
the biosynthesis and structure of the polymer (lignin) that plants need for structural
integrity and water transport but that poses the biggest limitation to the efficient
utilization of plant biomass in a range of natural and industrial processes. His group and
collaborators have been involved in delineating the structural effects and utilization
consequences of up- and down-regulating genes in the lignin monomer pathway (in a variety of
plants), and in developing new methods for structural analysis of lignins and the cell wall. An
understanding of the incredible metabolic plasticity of lignification has emerged, leading to
new approaches for improved biomass utilization. 
