CYTOLOGICAL REACTIONS OF NORMAL AND TMV-INFECTED TOBACCO LEAF CELLS TO ACID AND ALKALINE SOLUTIONS

Acid and basic buffer solutions were applied on slides under cover glasses to thin, hand sections of leaf tissue from normal tobacco plants and equivalent plants infected with tobacco mosaic virus (TMV). The effects on living cells were observed and photographed through phase optics. First, reversible changes and, later, irreversible changes were produced in the cells. Movement of the cytoplasm in a cell could be stopped completely and started again by replacing the unfavorable buffer solution with a favorable medium. Of the organelles, plastids became static first, then mitochondria, and lastly spherosomes. Spherosomes often moved actively when all other organelles were still. Translucent virus monolayers, consisting of particles aggregated side by side, provided markers in the parietal cytoplasm of recently infected cells. Mitochondria generally moved across their surface on the side adjacent to the tonoplast, spherosomes across the surface facing the cell wall. Alkaline buffer solution caused little change of texture in nucleus and cytoplasm or change of form in mitochondria. Clear areas appeared in some plastids. The acid buffer emphasized a cytoplasmic network representing flow lines and eliminated many cytoplasmic vesicles; mitochondria became shorter or spherical in outline, grana of chloroplasts more obvious. Virus inclusions, even the fragile monolayers, were not greatly altered until irreversible changes began. In pH 11–treated cells, the final changes included violent bubbling of cytoplasm, and in pH 2.2–treated cells, snapping of flow lines and coagulation of the cytoplasm. In either case, disintegration of cell structure and virus inclusions was rapid.