PREFACE 



The recent great advances in quantitative biology have been made 

 possible by the growth of new concepts and techniques in chemistry, 

 physics, and geology. These fundamental areas, together with 

 medicine, agriculture, and technology have provided the stimulus 

 for the modern inter-disciplinary approach to structure and function 

 in living matter. 



Among the more complex biological products, cell walls and 

 intercellular substances are nearly unique in having been subjected 

 to virtually all of the potentially applicable methods of study and 

 analysis. It is indeed a measure of their complexity that we still 

 know so little about these materials, although they have been 

 objects for immunological, geological, colloid, and textile research. 

 Nevertheless, endeavors in these and many other areas have 

 revealed the outlines of a structural-functional system dynamically 

 associated with the living protoplast yet possessed of considerable 

 continuity in the fossil record. 



If it were important for no other reason, the study of cell walls 

 and kindred structures would provide an object lesson in the 

 effectiveness of the broad approach. Of course, cell wall research 

 is not of interest solely as an exercise in the unification of scientific 

 methods and ideas. The macromolecular— and often highly struc- 

 tured-products which are manufactured at the protoplastic surface 

 must reflect the interaction between the biochemistry of the cell 

 interior and the physicochemical conditions at the cell boundary. 

 In the constituents of the wall and their arrangement must reside 

 a great body of information about such interactions and the state 

 of the protoplastic surface. 



No less important is the contribution which cell wall research 

 can make to the study of evolutionary processes. It is most fortunate 

 that there exist for study comparatively resistant substances such 

 as lignin in plants and bone in animals, so that the proper combina- 

 tion of paleobiochemistry and comparative biochemistry, can 



