Abstract
Grasses accumulate silicon in the form of silicic acid, which is precipitated as amorphous silica in microscopic particles termed phytoliths. These particles comprise a variety of morphologies according to the cell type in which the silica was deposited. Despite the evident morphological differences, phytolith chemistry has mostly been analysed in bulk samples, neglecting differences between the varied types formed in the same species. In this work, we extracted leaf phytoliths from mature plants of Sorghum bicolor (L.) Moench. Using solid state NMR and thermogravimetric analysis, we show that the extraction methods alter greatly the silica molecular structure, its condensation degree and the trapped organic matter. Measurements of individual phytoliths by Raman and synchrotron FTIR microspectroscopies in combination with multivariate analysis separated bilobate silica cells from prickles and long cells, based on the silica molecular structures and the fraction and composition of occluded organic matter. The variations in structure and composition of sorghum phytoliths suggest that the biological pathways leading to silica deposition vary between these cell types.
Original language | English |
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Article number | 1571 |
Journal | Frontiers in Plant Science |
Volume | 10 |
DOIs | |
State | Published - 11 Dec 2019 |
Bibliographical note
Publisher Copyright:© Copyright © 2019 Zancajo, Diehn, Filiba, Goobes, Kneipp and Elbaum.
Funding
We thank V. Rosen (HUJI) for his help extracting the phyto-liths by microwave digestion, M. Soukup for discussion on silicification mechanism, I. Feldmann for help with SEM images of phytoliths, I. Gardi (HUJI) for his help with the TGA analysis, L. Puskar (HZB, Berlin) for support at the BESSY IRIS beamline, and B. Zimmermann and A. Kohler (NMBU, Aas, Norway) for the EMSC scripts and discussion of IR spectra. We acknowledge the support by the German Research Foundation (DFG) and the Open Access Publication Fund of Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin. This work was funded in part by the Excellence Initiative of the German Research Foundation (DFG) GSC 1013 (SALSA) and the Israel Ministry of Agriculture grant 12-01-0031. We thank BESSY-HZB for the allocation of synchrotron radiation beam time. We thank V. Rosen (HUJI) for his help extracting the phyto?liths by microwave digestion, M. Soukup for discussion on silicification mechanism, I. Feldmann for help with SEM images of phytoliths, I. Gardi (HUJI) for his help with the TGA analysis, L. Puskar (HZB, Berlin) for support at the BESSY IRIS beamline, and B. Zimmermann and A. Kohler (NMBU, Aas, Norway) for the EMSC scripts and discussion of IR spectra. We acknowledge the support by the German Research Foundation (DFG) and the Open Access Publication Fund of Humboldt-Universit?t zu Berlin.
Funders | Funder number |
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Excellence Initiative of the German Research Foundation | |
Israel Ministry of Agriculture | 12-01-0031 |
Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft | GSC 1013 |
Norges Miljø- og Biovitenskapelige Universitet |
Keywords
- Raman
- biosilicification
- phytoliths
- solid state NMR
- sorghum
- synchrotron FTIR