Science Things! - Lignin
from @hatandsandalsguy:
"How does lignen do the thing? How did it form? What kind of cells produce lignen? What even is lignen? Also, how does one corrrctly spell lignen?"
I'm so glad you asked! Based on your other comment, I'm assuming you mean lignIN and not lignAN. Both of them are things existing in plants. Scientists aren't great at names.
So lignin is a thing made by vascular plants (aka land plants that use special tissues and compounds to move water and food upwards) to help them be all upright and not rot and stuff (along with cellulose). Specifically it goes into a plant's cell walls and helps keep them stiff and move water around.
Lignin is made by the vascular cells of a plant's system which is in the sort of middle of a plant's trunk/branches/stems. It's first made inside the cell and then put outside the cell membrane into the cell wall.
Once it's outside in the cell wall it undergoes polymerization, which is where a whole bunch of single molecules (called monomers) bond together to form a polymer. Once that's all done it stays stiff and via some chemistry jargon it helps move water upwards against gravity also.
There are more sciencey words and explanations to how this happens - but the whole biosynthesis process isn't actually totally understood yet. Its evolution and existence is still being studied!
(Also interestingly, lignin has been recently discovered in red algae but it could be unrelated to lignin in plants or completely rewrite plant evolution. Or just help us understand the original purpose of lignin - structure or water transport. We don't know.)
So I also mentioned it helps keep plants from rotting. Basically, the chemical structures of lignin is very hard to break down and takes specific enzymes or a lot of external energy to do so. Kind ike those 2 legos that are really hard to pull apart.
So even after a plant dies we still have this organic compound long after. Rings of a tree are just layers and layers of old vascular cells of a plant pushed outwards. The huge amount of wood sticks around partly because lignin doesn't fall apart.
Mostly decomposers have evolved enzymes to break down the lignin to get nutrients from it. And different species of plants also form slightly different forms of lignin! So there are different organisms to break down these different types.
You know how different wood smells different? Or things cooked on a wood fire can smell or taste different based on the type of wood? That's (partly) lignin too! Based on the chemicals different types of lignin breaks down into when burned.
Basically you've been experiencing lignin a lot and never knew it and the world is amazing.
(I am not a plant scientist though by any means so I'm tagging @botanyshitposts in case I fucked something.)
Also while looking for images I found out that plant cells sometimes form cool structures that sometimes look very shocked or designy.
Talk science to me! (Or ask)
