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)
“Empirical science is apt to cloud the sight, and, by the very knowledge of functions and processes, to bereave the student of the manly contemplation of the whole.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“Adolescents, for all their self-involvement, are emerging from the self-centeredness of childhood. Their perception of other people has more depth. They are better equipped at appreciating others’ reasons for action, or the basis of others’ emotions. But this maturity functions in a piecemeal fashion. They show more understanding of their friends, but not of their teachers.”
—Terri Apter (20th century)