DETECTION OF GENETIC DAMAGE INDUCED BY PLANT GROWTH HORMONE PUTRESCINE ON Allium cepa AND Vicia faba

Plant hormones and other growth regulators are chemicals that play a vital role in different aspects of plant growth and development. Since their discovery; plant hormones remained the focus of interest in many botanical research areas. In nature plants are susceptible to different biotic and abiotic stresses. The response to these stresses occur using hormones and their signal transduction pathways. Even at the present time, when the role of genes in regulating all aspects of growth and development is considered of prime importance, it is still clear that the path of development is under the hormonal control, either via changes in hormone levels in response to change in gene transcription or with the hormones themselves as regulators of gene expression (Davies, 2004). Polyamines such as putrescine, spermine and spermidine are one of the important growth regulating substances which are present in all living organisms. They are important for cell division as there is a positive correlation between the proliferative activity of cells and their contents (Heby and Persson, 1990; Marton and Pegg, 1995; Wallace et al., 2003). The wide use of theses hormones imposes the importance to screen their mutagenic potentialities before their application to environment to avoid their negative impact on the quality of human life. The present study aims to investigate the effect of putrescine on mitotic cell division in Allium cepa root tips and its ability to induce chromosomal aberrations. This work also focus on the use of image cytometry for the estimation of changes in cell cycle progression. In addition, the effect of putrescine on protein banding pattern in Vicia faba seeds was studied using sodium dodecyle sulphate polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis (SDS-PAGE) technique.