Dataset Information

Transformation of hard pollen into soft matter.

ABSTRACT: Pollen's practically-indestructible shell structure has long inspired the biomimetic design of organic materials. However, there is limited understanding of how the mechanical, chemical, and adhesion properties of pollen are biologically controlled and whether strategies can be devised to manipulate pollen beyond natural performance limits. Here, we report a facile approach to transform pollen grains into soft microgel by remodeling pollen shells. Marked alterations to the pollen substructures led to environmental stimuli responsiveness, which reveal how the interplay of substructure-specific material properties dictates microgel swelling behavior. Our investigation of pollen grains from across the plant kingdom further showed that microgel formation occurs with tested pollen species from eudicot plants. Collectively, our experimental and computational results offer fundamental insights into how tuning pollen structure can cause dramatic alterations to material properties, and inspire future investigation into understanding how the material science of pollen might influence plant reproductive success.

SUBMITTER: Fan TF

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7081183 | biostudies-literature | 2020 Mar

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Transformation of hard pollen into soft matter.

Fan Teng-Fei TF Park Soohyun S Shi Qian Q Zhang Xingyu X Liu Qimin Q Song Yoohyun Y Chin Hokyun H Ibrahim Mohammed Shahrudin Bin MSB Mokrzecka Natalia N Yang Yun Y Li Hua H Song Juha J Suresh Subra S Cho Nam-Joon NJ

Nature communications 20200319 1

Pollen's practically-indestructible shell structure has long inspired the biomimetic design of organic materials. However, there is limited understanding of how the mechanical, chemical, and adhesion properties of pollen are biologically controlled and whether strategies can be devised to manipulate pollen beyond natural performance limits. Here, we report a facile approach to transform pollen grains into soft microgel by remodeling pollen shells. Marked alterations to the pollen substructures l ...[more]

PMID: 32193375

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Project description:To understand the proximate and ultimate causes that shape acoustic communication in animals, objective characterizations of the vocal repertoire of a given species are critical, as they provide the foundation for comparative analyses among individuals, populations and taxa. Progress in this field has been hampered by a lack of standard in methodology, however. One problem is that researchers may settle on different variables to characterize the calls, which may impact on the classification of calls. More important, there is no agreement how to best characterize the overall structure of the repertoire in terms of the amount of gradation within and between call types. Here, we address these challenges by examining 912 calls recorded from wild chacma baboons (Papio ursinus). We extracted 118 acoustic variables from spectrograms, from which we constructed different sets of acoustic features, containing 9, 38, and 118 variables; as well 19 factors derived from principal component analysis. We compared and validated the resulting classifications of k-means and hierarchical clustering. Datasets with a higher number of acoustic features lead to better clustering results than datasets with only a few features. The use of factors in the cluster analysis resulted in an extremely poor resolution of emerging call types. Another important finding is that none of the applied clustering methods gave strong support to a specific cluster solution. Instead, the cluster analysis revealed that within distinct call types, subtypes may exist. Because hard clustering methods are not well suited to capture such gradation within call types, we applied a fuzzy clustering algorithm. We found that this algorithm provides a detailed and quantitative description of the gradation within and between chacma baboon call types. In conclusion, we suggest that fuzzy clustering should be used in future studies to analyze the graded structure of vocal repertoires. Moreover, the use of factor analyses to reduce the number of acoustic variables should be discouraged.

Dataset Information

Transformation of hard pollen into soft matter.

Publications

Transformation of hard pollen into soft matter.

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