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Laticiferous canal formation in fruits of Decaisnea fargesii: a programmed cell death process?

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Abstract

Programmed cell death (PCD), a topic of abiding interest, remodels plants at the cell, tissue, and organ levels involving various developmental processes of plants. The aim of this study is to provide a morphological characterization of evidence of PCD involvement in the laticiferous canal formation in fruit of Decaisnea fargesii. Several ultrastructural features of PCD have been observed including disintegration of vacuole and plasma membranes, cell wall degeneration, degenerated cytoplasm, abundant membrane structures and flocculent material, mitochondria and misshapen nuclei coupled with degraded plastids in vacuoles, and nuclei enveloped by rubber granule. In D. fargesii, the nuclei of the secretory epidermal cells become TUNEL-positive from the sunken stage to the late expanding stage, then DAPI-negative during the mature stage, indicating an early event of deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) cleavage and a late event of complete DNA degeneration. Gel electrophoresis indicates that DNA cleavage is random and does not result in the laddering pattern indicating multiples of internucleosomal units. During the PCD of secretory epidermal cells, the rubber granules continue to be synthesized and accumulated in the secretory epidermal cells despite nuclear degradation. The PCD’s role in laticiferous canal formation suggests that PCD may play important roles in gland development of plants.

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Abbreviations

PCD:

programmed cell death

TUNEL:

terminal deoxynucleotidyl transferase-mediated dUTP nick end labeling

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Acknowledgements

We thank Margaret Joyner for her excellent revision of the manuscript. This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China [30970170] and Shannxi Provincial Department of Education Scientific Research Projects for the Key Disciplines of a Key Laboratory of China [09JS087].

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Key Laboratory of Resource Biology and Biotechnology in Western China, Ministry of Education, School of Life Science, Northwest University, 229 Taibai Bei Road, Xi’an, 710069, China

    Ya-Fu Zhou & Wen-Zhe Liu

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  1. Ya-Fu Zhou
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  2. Wen-Zhe Liu
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Correspondence to Wen-Zhe Liu.

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Handling Editor: Liwen Jiang

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Zhou, YF., Liu, WZ. Laticiferous canal formation in fruits of Decaisnea fargesii: a programmed cell death process?. Protoplasma 248, 683–694 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00709-010-0229-2

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00709-010-0229-2

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