Functions
One continuing mystery surrounding microbial cellulose is its exact biological function. A. xylinus recently renamed as "Gluconacetobacter xylinus" is a successful and prevalent bacterium in nature, frequently finding a home in rotting fruits and sweetened liquids. The most familiar form of microbial cellulose is that of a pellicle on the top of a static cultured growth media. It has, thus, been hypothesized that cellulose acts as a floatation device, bringing the bacteria to the oxygen-rich air-media interface. This hypothesis has largely been discredited by experiments conducted on submerged oxygen-permeable silicone tubes that show that cellulose grows well submerged if enough oxygen is present. Others suspect that cellulose is used to immobilize the bacteria in an attempt to keep it near the food source, or as a form of protection against ultraviolet light.
Read more about this topic: Microbial Cellulose
Famous quotes containing the word functions:
“If photography is allowed to stand in for art in some of its functions it will soon supplant or corrupt it completely thanks to the natural support it will find in the stupidity of the multitude. It must return to its real task, which is to be the servant of the sciences and the arts, but the very humble servant, like printing and shorthand which have neither created nor supplanted literature.”
—Charles Baudelaire (1821–1867)
“Those things which now most engage the attention of men, as politics and the daily routine, are, it is true, vital functions of human society, but should be unconsciously performed, like the corresponding functions of the physical body.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“In today’s world parents find themselves at the mercy of a society which imposes pressures and priorities that allow neither time nor place for meaningful activities and relations between children and adults, which downgrade the role of parents and the functions of parenthood, and which prevent the parent from doing things he wants to do as a guide, friend, and companion to his children.”
—Urie Bronfenbrenner (b. 1917)