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:
“One of the most highly valued functions of used parents these days is to be the villains of their children’s lives, the people the child blames for any shortcomings or disappointments. But if your identity comes from your parents’ failings, then you remain forever a member of the child generation, stuck and unable to move on to an adulthood in which you identify yourself in terms of what you do, not what has been done to you.”
—Frank Pittman (20th century)
“The English masses are lovable: they are kind, decent, tolerant, practical and not stupid. The tragedy is that there are too many of them, and that they are aimless, having outgrown the servile functions for which they were encouraged to multiply. One day these huge crowds will have to seize power because there will be nothing else for them to do, and yet they neither demand power nor are ready to make use of it; they will learn only to be bored in a new way.”
—Cyril Connolly (1903–1974)
“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)