An improved approach for transformation of plant cells by microinjection: molecular and genetic analysis

A new culture method for the injection of tobacco mesophyll protoplasts has been established. The protoplasts are embedded in a thin layer of alginate and are nourished from the medium in the underlying basislayer. In the alginate layer the protoplasts regenerate to calli at a frequency of up to 80%. Embedded protoplasts can be selected either with 50 mg l⁻¹ kanamycin or 5 mg l⁻¹ paromomycin. Single resistant cells can be recovered from about 10 000 sensitive cells in one alginate layer. Injection of theneo gene (coding for neomycin phosphotransferase II) into protoplast derived single cells in the alginate layer results in kanamycin resistant colonies that can be regenerated to mature plants. These plants express the neomycin phosphotransferase as shown by enzyme activity assay. The integration of the transgene into the plant genome could be proved by Southern hybridization to high molecular weight DNA. With this culture method 100 cells can be injected per hour. Transformation frequencies range from 2 to 20%. In crossing experiments, it was shown that the foreign gene is transmitted to the next generation in a Mendelian fashion.     

Application of microinjection techniques to plant nutrition

To gain a full understanding of the complex processes that underlie plant nutrition requires the elucidation of the genetic, molecular, biochemical, biophysical, physiological and environmental factors that interact, at the cellular, organ and whole plant levels, to allow this sessile organism to optimize the allocation and utilization of available resources. The application of microinjection methods, in conjunction with molecular tools, established a powerful experimental approach to elucidate the processes underlying plant growth and development. Besides providing insight into the molecular nature of many of the membrane transport systems that function in nutrient acquisition and transport, this approach revealed the presence of a unique plasmodesmal macromolecular trafficking system that operates at the cellular/tissue and whole-plant level. This information processing network it discussed in terms of its role in allowing plants to regulate physiological activities at a supracellular level. Future studies aimed at identifying additional genes associated with this plasmodesmal macromolecular trafficking system will advance our understanding of the function and evolution of this novel plant communication system.     

A simple method for hemoglobin measurement in cell culture system.

A simple method of hemoglobin analysis in a cell culture system is described. Hemoglobins synthesized in cell cultures are labeled with radioactive amino acids. The cell extract containing radiolabeled hemoglobin is mixed with A, F, S, C, hemoglobin markers and separated by cellulose acetate electrophoresis. Individual bands of hemoglobin are cut from the gel and analyzed for radioactivity. This method is especially useful for determination of newly synthesized minute amount of hemoglobin in cell extracts that are difficult to visualize by staining procedure.     

A pilot plant for mammalian cell culture

Studies of the possible viral etiology of human leukemia have required large quantities of cultured cells derived from human hematopoietic tissues. Since cultures sufficiently large and free from contamination could not readily be produced according to existing methods, a pilot, cell culture plant has been constructed for the production of mammalian cells in mass quantity. 500-ml to 20-liter trophocell units have already proved to be scientifically and economically practical, as they provide good reliability, excellent growth rates, and sustained yield of human cells. 200-liter stainless steel culture units have now been added to the trophocell system. Five complete 200 liter units are now in operation. The design of the original stainless steel unit was based on that of a stainless steel, jacketed soup kettle. There are no openings in the vessel other than those in the lid, which provide convenient access points for sampling, sensor probes, etc. Environmental parameters, e.g., liquid level, temperature, and pH, are monitored and controlled with commercially available apparatus. Many initial problems connected with the new 200 liter units have been resolved, but operational and design problems remain in the areas of stable instrumentation, cell harvesting, salvaging and reuse of unspent media components, establishment of physiologic steady stale, recovery of virus-containing cells with reculture of the remaining unaffected cells, and the recovery and separation of cell components and special products such as immunoglobulins, interferons, and hormones. A definitive cell plant with culture units of 20, 50, 250, and 1250 liters is now being constructed.     

A simple method for large-scale electrofusion and culture of plant protoplasts

A simple method is described for the electrofusion of plant protoplasts. Protoplasts were aggregated in a radio-frequency field (10 V RMS, 0.5 MHz) for 15-30 s with an inter-electrode distance of J mm. They were then fused with a 300-V DC pulse. The protoplasts were able to divide after this treatment. A trans-ferrable electrode permitted electrofusion of l-ml volumes of culture in standard tissue-culture dishes in about 20 s.     

A lab-built respirometer for plant and animal cell culture

A very simple off-line respirometer was developed to measure oxygen consumption rates of low respiring and shear-sensitive cell suspensions. The respirometer is composed of a 10 mL glass syringe in which the plunger was substituted with a polarographic dissolved oxygen probe. Mechanical agitation is provided by means of a magnetic stirring bar inside the measuring chamber and a stir plate placed below the respirometer. Abiotic oxygen fluxes occurring in the measurement chamber such as oxygen diffusion and probe oxygen consumption were investigated. The apparent oxygen uptake rate was then corrected for abiotic oxygen fluxes, leading to accurate measurements of respiration rates ranging from 0.5 to 25.0 mM x h(-1). Additionally, the effect of the stirring bar shape and of the test length on the integrity of plant (Eschschzoltzia californica) and animal (NS0) cells was evaluated. Animal cells showed a higher resistance to mechanical stirring inside the respirometer compared to plant cells (0% of broken cells and 78.1% respectively for a polygonal stirring bar and a 15 min test). For plant cells, cell damage inside the measurement chamber was reduced by optimizing the stirring bar shape and reducing the test length to 5 min or less. This very simple design was shown to provide reliable and low-cost quantification of the oxygen uptake rate of plant and animal cells and can be use even for more demanding measurements such as oxygen affinity studies.     

The use of a microinjection procedure for large-scale production of the microsporidian Nosema eurytremae in Pieris brassicae

Nosema eurytremae, a microsporidian parasite of Malaysian trematodes, was injected at the rate of 1 × 10⁴ spores/larva into Pieris brassicae. The larvae, which subsequently pupated, were incubated at 25 to 26°C and on harvesting 19 days later yielded an average of 6 × 10⁸ spores/pupa. This was equivalent to 60,000 times the initial dose. Purity of filtered, washed spore suspensions ranged from 80 to 99% with up to 20% host debris.     

Comparison of isoperoxide patterns in tobacco cell culture and in the intact plant

Analysis by ion-exchange chromatography of the enzymes from cultured tobacco cells and root or leaf tissues of the tobacco plant revealed that the cultured cells contain exclusively cationic peroxidases and the leaf tissues mainly anionic and neutral peroxidases.     

A simple, leaky cell growth model for plant cell aggregates

A simple growth model is proposed for plant cell aggregates which accounts for leakage of a single intermediate metabolite from the aggregates to the medium. This model predicts a lag phase in the growth curve whose extent is determined by the intermediate metabolite leakage coefficient and its equilibrium distribution coefficient between the medium and the cell aggregates, the size of the inoculum relative to the system total water content, and the initial intermediate metabolite content in the medium. The model thus provides for an interaction between growing plant cells and their environment in a way that has heretofore been unquantified. Preliminary validation of the model has been made against literature data of Dioscorea deltoidea grown in batch suspension cell culture on sucrose, yielding a correlation coefficient of 0.997. The predicted glucose + fructose concentration in the medium agrees reasonably well with experimental measurements after ca, 3.5 days of culture, although a discrepancy exists between model prediction and experiment immediately after startup. Further validation of the model is suggested on this and other plant species.     

A simple and economical algal culture system for stable isotopic labelling

Summary An alternative method for culturing algae for production of stable isotopically¹³C,¹⁵N-labelled growth media is presented. The culturing principle relies on a closed system connected to a chemical carbon dioxide generator. The system enables economical and labor-inexpensive production of stable isotopically labelled extracts     

Introduction of foreign DNA into walled plant cells via liposomes injected into the vacuole: a preliminary study

Plasmids containing the firefly luciferase reporter gene were introduced into tobacco and maize by electroporation. They were used to calibrate the performance characteristics of an Hamamatsu C1966 AVEC/VIM photonic camera-Leitz photomicroscope image processing system. Luciferin-dependent light emission was readily detected, on an individual cell basis, using the analytical photon counting mode of the Hamamatsu system. An efficient liposome-DNA encapsulation protocol was developed and used to introduce the firefly luciferase plasmid into walled cells of tobacco, maize, carrot and rice. This was achieved by pressure-injecting the liposomes (DNA encapsulated inside the vesicle) into the vacuole where they subsequently fused with the tonoplast, releasing the DNA into the cytoplasm. Analytical photon counting studies were conducted on injected cells to determine whether the DNA introduced in this way was expressed. To date all experiments have proved negative. Reasons for this lack of expression are discussed.     

A simple in vitro culture system for tracheal cartilage development

Semi-circular tracheal cartilage is a critical determinant of maintaining architectural integrity of the respiratory airway. The current effort to understand the morphogenesis of tracheal cartilage is challenged by the lack of appropriate model systems. Here we report an in vitro tracheal cartilage system using embryonic tracheal–lung explants to recapitulate in vivo tracheal cartilage developmental processes. With modifications of a current lung culture protocol, we report a consistent in vitro technique of culturing tracheal cartilage from primitive mouse embryonic foregut for the first time. This tracheal culture system not only induces the formation of tracheal cartilage from the mouse embryonic foregut but also allows for the proper patterning of the developed tracheal cartilage. Furthermore, we show that this culture technique can be applied to culturing other types of cartilage in vertebrae, limbs, and ribs. We believe that this novel application of our in vitro culture system will facilitate the manipulation of cartilage development under various conditions and thus enabling us to advance our current limited knowledge on cartilage biology and development.     

A 205 kDa protein from non-neuronal cells in culture contains tubulin binding epitopes

Microtubule-associated proteins (MAPs) interact with tubulinin vitro andin vivo. Despite that there is a large amount of information on the roles of these proteins in neurons, the data on non-neuronal MAPs or MAPs-related proteins is scarce. There is an increasing number of microtubule-interacting proteins that have been identified in different cultured cell lines, and some of them share common functional epitopes with the most well-known MAPs, MAP-2 and tau. In a search for tubulin-interacting proteins in non-neuronal cells we identified a 205 kDa protein in the monkey kidney Vero cells in culture, on the basis of immunological studies and affinity chromatography. This protein interacts with the C-terminal moiety of -tubulin and cosediments with taxol assembled microtubules, but it was not recovered after successive cycles of assembly and disassembly. The presence of neuronal MAPs such as MAP-1, MAP-2 and tau was not detected in these cells. Interestingly, the studies showed that the 205 kDa protein contained a tubulin binding motif which was recognized by site-directed antibodies that also tag tubulin binding epitopes on MAP-2 and tau. This characteristic led us to designate this protein as MBD-205, a component that shares binding domains with these MAPs, rather than as a marker of the MAPs family. On the other hand, immunofluorescence experiments using site-specific antibodies, i.e. MAP-reacting monoclonal anti-idiotypic reagent MTB6.22 and a polyclonal antibody to the second tau repeat, revealed a MBD-205 co-localization with membrane structures and microtubule-organizing centers in Vero cells. Microinjection studies along with studies on the cell distribution suggest that MBD-205 appears to play a structural role at the level of the microtubule interactions in these cells.     

Hormonal mechanisms for differentiation in plant tissue culture

Summary Cells possess extraordinary powers to organize their molecular processes not only to maintain a cell in a given steady state but also to recognize that state during differentiation. Regulation of these organizational forces appears to be under the control of chemical factors, and a hormonal concept of regulation has evolved. Hormones have been considered to act by reacting with a specific target site. This may be part of their mode of action, but I would like to suggest that a hormone enters and becomes part of a total molecular resonance system. In so doing, the entire molecular system of the cell is modified. Of the known plant hormones, the cytokinins, because of their role in experimentally induced cell division and differentiation, serve as a probe of hormonal involvement in differentiation. Cultured somatic cells of tobacco plants can be induced to undergo differentiation by addition of cytokinin and auxin to the medium. Studies of the cytokinin hormones show a series of diverse molecular involvements. The archetype cytokinin, N⁶-(Δ²-isopentenyl) adenosine (i⁶Ado), occurs in some molecular species of tRNA where it plays a vital role in the codon-anticodon interaction of tRNA and m-RNA. i⁶Ado under-goes extensive metabolism in the tobacco tissue. It is either degraded to adenosine or converted to derivatives that possess biological activity. It is perhaps, therefore, more correct to consider the hormone function as being derived from this total metabolic web. The normal somatic cells of tobacco cultures spontaneously change occasionally into an autonomous form that requires no external growth factors. This line of cells synthesizes i⁶Ado. The metabolic web of the hormone-dependent strain can be perturbed by added auxin but such is not the case in the autonomous strain. These data provide some insight into the altered state of cytokinin activity in which a cell line changes into an autonomous form. Curiously, in become independent of the requirement for exogenous cytokinin, the autonomous tissue becomes sensitive to added cytokinin. i⁶Ado also inhibits the growth of lines of mammalian cancer cells grown in culture. Presented in the formal symposium on Information Transfer in Eukaryotic Cells, at the 26th Annual Meeting of the Tissue Culture Association, Montreal, Quebec, June 2–5, 1975.     

A simple, accurate method for determining wet and dry weight concentrations of plant cell suspension cultures using microcentrifuge tubes

Summary A simple method using microcentrifuge tubes for determining fresh and dry weights, and collecting cell-free supernatant from plant suspension cultures is described. This method offers improvements in accuracy, precision, and time efficiency over traditional filtration methods. Using 4-day-old Nicotinia tabacum cultures, the centrifuge method was shown to remove 25% more of the interstitial water from cell aggregates compared to a suction filtration method, with significantly less variation in fresh weight data.     

Use of a uterine-cell monolayer culture system for micromanipulated bovine embryos

The objective of this study was to evaluate the growth of micromanipulated bovine embryos in two in vitro culture systems. Sixty ova (day 7 from estrus) were collected in Dulbecco's phosphate-buffered saline (PBS), with 2% fetal calf serum, and transferred to a PBS holding medium containing 10% fetal calf serum to prepare for micromanipulation. Forty embryos (morula to expanded blastocyst stages) were selected for embryo splitting using a modified microsurgery procedure. Thirty-nine of these embryos were successfully bisected into demi-embryos (DE) and the halves allotted by post-manipulation quality grades into one of two treatment groups (Trt). DE in Trt A were cultured in Ham's F-10 medium with 10% FCS (HF-10) while the remaining DE halves from each embryo were cocultured in HF-10 on a monolayer of endometrial fibroblasts (8 x 10(4) viable fibroblast cells plated three days prior to culture) in Trt B. Embryo development, recorded at 12-hour intervals, was evaluated by a split-plot analysis of variance. Results indicated that embryo viability decreased (P<0.001) over time in culture. Overall viability was greater (P<0.001) for DE in Trt B than in Trt A, with a significant (P<0.05) Trt x Time interaction, indicating that embryo viability decreased more rapidly across time in HF-10 than in the monolayer coculture system. The percentage of DE developing at 12, 24, 36, 48, 60 and 72 hours in culture was: 44%, 41%, 33%, 28%, 21% and 18% for Trt A and 69%, 69%, 69%, 67%, 62% and 62% for Trt B. Fourteen of the DE in Trt B attached to fibroblast monolayer and initiated trophoblastic outgrowth and four additional DE remained viable for up to 17.5 days in vitro as intact blastocysts. These findings are the first reported that demonstrate that the zona-free bovine DE will develop during in vitro culture. Also, the bovine endometrial fibroblast monolayer system proved to be excellent for both short term (相似文献   

Development of a simple disposable six minibioreactor system for suspension mammalian cell culture

A simple disposable six minibioreactor system has been developed in order to perform multiple cell culture experiments in parallel, as a tool to accelerate experimentation in cell culture optimization. The system consists of a fixed part containing all instrumentation, sensors and actuators, and a disposable part, a compact unit with six minibioreactors with 10–15 mL of working volume each. This single-use unit is made of transparent biocompatible plastic material (polystyrene). Each one of the minibioreactors is equipped with agitation, headspace aeration supply and two optical probes, one for total cells measurement and pH, and another for dissolved oxygen measurement (and consequently the evaluation of Oxygen Uptake Rate, OUR). As an example of application, the performance of the system is successfully demonstrated for the culture of hybridoma cells growing in suspension under different conditions. The results allowed confirming the reproducibility of the system, and the feasibility to follow-up continuously the differences in cell growth, pH, pO₂ and OUR evolution when hybridoma cells are cultured in different experimental conditions. For this, three different sets of experiments are considered. First, the use of the same culture medium DMEM supplemented with 10% fetal calf serum in all six minibioreactors. Second, the use of DMEM supplemented with three different FCS percentages (0, 1 and 10%) in two minibioreactors each. Third, the use of two different media (DMEM supplemented with 10% FCS and a chemically defined medium) in three minibioreactors each.     

Investigation of assisted fertilization and biology of reproduction by sperm microinjection

Recent success in assisted fertilization mainly depended on the development of sperm microinjection methods: intracytoplasmic sperm injection and subzonal insemination. Some basic mechanisms that under-lie fertilization were revealed by using intracytoplasmic sperm injection. In respect to this, problems of fertility, oocyte activation, formation of pronuclei and practical aspects of intracytoplasmic sperm injection are discussed.