Process For Plant Cells
The somatic fusion process occurs in four steps:
- The removal of the cell wall of one cell of each type of plant using cellulase enzyme to produce a somatic cell called a protoplast
- The cells are then fused using electric shock (electrofusion) or chemical treatment to join the cells and fuse together the nuclei. The resulting fused nucleus is called heterokaryon.
- The somatic hybrid cell then has its cell wall induced to form using hormones
- The cells are then grown into calluses which then are further grown to plantlets and finally to a full plant, known as a somatic hybrid.
Different from the procedure for seed plants describe above, fusion of moss protoplasts can be initiated without electric shock but by the use of polyethylene glycol (PEG). Further, moss protoplasts do not need phytohormones for regeneration, and they do not form a callus. Instead, regenerating moss protoplasts behave like germinating moss spores. Of further note sodium nitrate and calcium ion at high pH can be used, although results are variable depending on the organism.
Read more about this topic: Somatic Fusion
Famous quotes containing the words process, plant and/or cells:
“Science and art are only too often a superior kind of dope, possessing this advantage over booze and morphia: that they can be indulged in with a good conscience and with the conviction that, in the process of indulging, one is leading the “higher life.””
—Aldous Huxley (1894–1963)
“They do not live in the world,
Are not in time and space.
From birth to death hurled
No word do they have, not one
To plant a foot upon,
Were never in any place.”
—Edwin Muir (1887–1959)
“Madness is locked beneath. It goes into tissues, is swallowed by the cells. The cells go mad. Cancer is their flag. Cancer is the growth of madness denied.”
—Norman Mailer (b. 1923)