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Sporopollenin Nanostructure of Ilex paraguariensis A.St.Hil PollenGrains

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  30 December 2005

R. P. Santos
Affiliation:
Universidade Federal do Ceará, Brazil Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil
L. M. Rebelo
Affiliation:
Universidade Federal do Ceará, Brazil
E. F. Costa
Affiliation:
Universidade Federal do Ceará, Brazil
A. A. X. Santiago
Affiliation:
Universidade Federal do Ceará, Brazil
V. N. Freire
Affiliation:
Universidade Federal do Ceará, Brazil
J. A. K. Freire
Affiliation:
Universidade Federal do Ceará, Brazil
G. A. Farias
Affiliation:
Universidade Federal do Ceará, Brazil
T. M. Oliveira
Affiliation:
Universidade Federal do Ceará, Brazil
G. A. Bezerra
Affiliation:
Universidade Federal do Ceará, Brazil
B. S. Cavada
Affiliation:
Universidade Federal do Ceará, Brazil
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Extract

Pollens appear like a fine to coarse powder that is liberated by the microsporangia of Gimnosperms and Angiosperms. The pollen grain wall, the sporoderm, envelopes the microgametophytes (male gametophytes), which produce the male gametes of seed plants. Pollen grains are interesting from the material science point of view since the native polymer, the sporopollenin, found in the sporoderm outer layer (exine), is one of the toughest known materials which is degraded by oxidation but is resistant to reduction. This property permits the sporopollenin persistence as an unaltered polymer in sediments of great age, e.g the Ordovician period, 400 million years ago. Sporopollenin is a mixture of fatty acids, phenyl-derivatives as p-coumaric acid, and carotenes [1]. Its nanostructure is not yet completed revealed. Therefore, more studies must be performed. A number of models have been proposed for the sporopollenin nanostructure of spores and pollen grains [2]. Rowley et al. [3-4] interpret exine structure as being formed by helical subunits, based on transmission and scanning electron microscope (TEM and SEM) studies. The atomic force microscopy (AFM) is the ideal method to study the sporopollenin nanostructure [5] since the arrangement of components is not visualized easily through other microscope techniques (e.g. TEM and SEM). In the present work, we used AFM to study the sporopollenin nanostructure of the Ilex paraguariensis A.St.Hil. exine, an Angiosperm (Aquifoliaceae).

Type
Other
Copyright
© 2005 Microscopy Society of America

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