Modulation of Fatty Acid Patterns During Protoplast Isolation

Abstract

Protoplast isolation and regeneration is known from numerous plant species (Binding et al. 1). But there are plant species which show very unconstant regeneration or no reaction at all, even if the isolation showed high viability of the protoplasts. Does this lacking response only depend on medium composition and effectors or are there other unknown conditions? The procedure of protoplast isolation and the use of strong hypertonic media is a dramatic disturbance of cell metabolism and might be a stress situation, which cannot be overcome by the cell. Fleck et al. (2) reported “osmotic-stress proteins” in Nicotiana sylvestris protoplasts and Kaiser et al. (3) showed a remarkable influence of hypertonic media on photosynthesis of Spinacia oleracea protoplasts.