How cellulose synthase density in the plasma membrane may dictate cell wall texture

Cellulose microfibrils are deposited by cellulose synthases into the cell wall in often strikingly regular patterns. Here we discuss several mechanisms that have been put forward to explain the alignment of cellulose microfibrils that gives rise to ordered cell wall textures: the hypothesis that cortical microtubules align cellulose microfibrils during their deposition, the liquid crystal hypothesis in which cellulose microfibrils self-assemble into textures after their deposition, the templated incorporation htypothesis, and the geometrical theory in wich the density of active cellulose synthase complexes inside the plasma membrane may dictate the architecture of the cell wall.