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Title: The hidden face of the plant cuticle. Cover description: The cuticle is a ubiquitous protective barrier crucial for plant development. The multiple biological functions of the plant cuticle are driven by the assembly of the cuticle building blocks. Actually, plant cuticle is a natural biocomposite comprising, lipids, polysaccharides and phenolics. Using tomato fruit as a model, and combining spectroscopic cartography and biological approaches, Reynoud et al. showed a clear chemical clustering within the cutin-polymer matrix, whose architecture is finely tuned over fruit development. In this illustration, confocal Raman mapping of cuticles along tomato fruit development (10, 25, 35, 40 days post anthesis) enabled to depict the specific distribution of components of the cutin polymer matrix. Green, pcoumaric acid; red, cutin; blue, pectins; purple, crystalline cellulose. Image credit: Nicolas Reynoud, B. Bakan group, BIA lab, French National Research Institute for Agriculture, Food, and Environment (INRAE).

Volume 190 Issue 3 November 2022