Final Activity Report Summary - WALLNET (Functional Genomics for Biogenesis of the Plant Cell Wall) The WALLNET project had a duration of 4 years, and 15 young researchers have been employed for a total of more than 25 person years. 10 laboratories in 7 different countries participated. The joint project was focused on determining how plants synthesise their cell wall. The cell wall is very important for plants ability to stand upright and to protect itself against the environment. Furthermore, the plant cell wall is the source of many products of great economic importance and comprise major components of food and feed. The consortium has developed a large set of tools for investigation plant cell walls. These tools include antibodies that recognise specific types of polysaccharides present in the cell wall. Also the consortium has isolated genes for more than 100 enzymes involved in making the plant cell wall and developed methods to study the genes and the proteins they encode. The consortium also made more than 100 different plant mutant lines lacking one or more of these proteins. These tools have enabled to consortium to discover many important aspects of cell wall biosynthesis. The most important outcome of the project - and always the main goal of this training network, is that the young researchers have been trained and exposed to international collaboration. The WALLNET RTN has been highly successful scientifically and as a networking opportunity for a large number of involved researchers, both those funded directly by WALLNET as well as the PIs and other key group members. The topic of WALLNET was the biosynthesis of plant cell walls. Lately, this area has received a tremendous interest due to the prospects of using plant biomass as a source of renewable energy. The scientific knowledge obtained in WALLNET is very valuable to these new research efforts and the persons involved in WALLNET have been ideally prepared for the current efforts.
