Congratulations to Dr. Mendel Perkins, who was awarded the Canadian Society of Plant Biologists' 2023 Ragai Ibriham Best Student Paper Award for his doctoral work published in The Plant Cell. The judges noted:
The article settles a long-standing and important question in plant biology, which is how monolignols are exported across the plasma membrane in order to be polymerized in the plant cell wall. Using a variety of advanced techniques, the authors show that lignin polymerization in the cell wall creates a concentration gradient that drives diffusion of monolignols across the lipid bilayer without protein transporters. The paper establishes a new paradigm in the field and has important implications not just for plant biology, but also for bioenergy and bioproduct applications.
Monolignol export by diffusion down a polymerization-induced concentration gradient
The Plant Cell, Volume 34, Issue 5, May 2022, Pages 2080–2095, https://doi.org/10.1093/plcell/koac051
This article was also the subject of a commentary: