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A MORPHOMETRIC STUDY OF THE ULTRASTRUCTURE OF ECHINOCEREUS ENGELMANNII (CACTACEAE). I. SHOOT APICAL MERISTEMS AT GERMINATION
Author(s) -
Mauseth James D.
Publication year - 1980
Publication title -
american journal of botany
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.218
H-Index - 151
eISSN - 1537-2197
pISSN - 0002-9122
DOI - 10.1002/j.1537-2197.1980.tb07639.x
Subject(s) - biology , cytoplasm , tunica , vacuole , meristem , germination , ultrastructure , chloroplast , botany , apical cell , endoplasmic reticulum , organelle , shoot , anatomy , microbiology and biotechnology , cell , biochemistry , gene
At germination the shoot apical meristems of Echinocereus engelmannii were discs with a volume of 666,000 μm 3 and were composed of a unistratose tunica (volume: 260,000 μm 3 ) and a corpus which was two cell‐layers thick (volume: 406,000 μm 3 ). Four days after germination the nucleus constituted 28.9% of the volume of the cell, and the vacuole constituted 24.5%. The mitochondria were 13.3% of the volume of the tunica cytoplasm, the chloroplasts 9.4%, and the dictyosomes only 1.2%. The endoplasmic reticulum was too sparse to be accurately measured. The organelles of the corpus were identical in size and shape to those of the tunica, but there were statistically significant differences in their cellular and cytoplasmic densities: the more distal corpus layer (C1) was less vacuolate (16.6% of the cell volume), and both corpus layers contained more chloroplasts, 12.0% of the cytoplasmic volume in C1 and 14.3% in the more proximal corpus layer (C2). During the first four days after germination there was a dramatic increase in the size of the central vacuole (e.g., from 15.4% to 24.5% in the tunica), and the mitochondria increased in density from 10.2% of the cytoplasmic volume to 13.3%. Chloroplast density also increased in all meristem layers, but the dictyosome density decreased, as much as a 30% loss in C2. There was also a highly significant reduction in the number of cisternae per dictyosome, from 5.47 to 4.77. Surprisingly, there was no change in heterochromatin: ca. 27% of the volume of the nuclei of all layers was heterochromatic at all stages studied. Thus, the organellar structure of corpus cells is distinctly different from that of tunica cells, and as the apical meristem becomes active after germination, the changes which occur are not uniform in the meristem but rather are zone‐specific.