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Stress‐induced somatic embryogenesis in vegetative tissues of Arabidopsis thaliana
Author(s) -
IkedaIwai Miho,
Umehara Mikihisa,
Satoh Shinobu,
Kamada Hiroshi
Publication year - 2003
Publication title -
the plant journal
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 3.058
H-Index - 269
eISSN - 1365-313X
pISSN - 0960-7412
DOI - 10.1046/j.1365-313x.2003.01702.x
Subject(s) - somatic embryogenesis , somatic cell , biology , arabidopsis , explant culture , arabidopsis thaliana , embryogenesis , embryo , microbiology and biotechnology , callus , botany , abscisic acid , mannitol , genetics , in vitro , biochemistry , gene , mutant
Summary Somatic embryogenesis is an obvious experimental evidence of totipotency, and is used as a model system for studying the mechanisms of de‐differentiation and re‐differentiation of plant cells. Although Arabidopsis is widely used as a model plant for genetic and molecular biological studies, there is no available tissue culture system for inducing somatic embryogenesis from somatic cells in this plant. We established a new tissue culture system using stress treatment to induce somatic embryogenesis in Arabidopsis . In this system, stress treatment induced formation of somatic embryos from shoot‐apical‐tip and floral‐bud explants. The somatic embryos grew into young plantlets with normal morphology, including cotyledons, hypocotyls, and roots, and some embryo‐specific genes ( ABI3 and FUS3 ) were expressed in these embryos. Several stresses (osmotic, heavy metal ion, and dehydration stress) induced somatic embryogenesis, but the optimum stress treatment differed between different stressors. When we used mannitol to cause osmotic stress, the optimal conditions for somatic embryogenesis were 6–9 h of culture on solid B5 medium containing 0.7 m mannitol, after which the explants were transferred to B5 medium containing 2,4‐dichlorophenoxyacetic acid (2,4‐D, 4.5 µ m ), but no mannitol. Using this tissue culture system, we induced somatic embryogenesis in three major ecotypes of Arabidopsis thaliana – Ws, Col, and L er .