Biochemistry 6th Edition by Reginald Garrett,Charles Grisham

Exercise 19

Assessing the growth potential and enzymology of a prolific plant nuisance
Kudzu is a vine that grows prolifically in the southern and southeastern United States. A native of Japan, China, and India, kudzu was brought to the United States in 1876 at the Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia. During the Great Depression of the 1930s, the Soil Conservation Service promoted kudzu for erosion control, and farmers were paid to plant it. Today, however, kudzu is a universal nuisance, spreading rapidly, and covering and destroying trees in large numbers. Already covering 7 to 10 million acres in the U.S., kudzu grows at the rate of a foot per day. Assume that the kudzu vine consists almost entirely of cellulose fibers, and assume that the fibers lie parallel to the vine axis. Calculate the rate of the cellulose synthase reaction that adds glucose units to the growing cellulose molecules. Use the structures in your text to make a reasonable estimate of the unit length of a cellulose molecule (from one glucose monomer to the next).