Culturing leaf protoplast-derived cells of the embryogenic alfalfa (Medicago sativa subsp. varia A2) genotype in the presence of low (1 microM) or high (10 microM) 2, 4-dichlorophenoxyacetic acid (2,4-D) concentrations results in different cell types. Cells exposed to high 2,4-D concentration remain small with dense cytoplasm and can develop into proembryogenic cell clusters, whereas protoplast...

We have established that polypeptides whose synthesis is reduced by 2,4-dichlorophenoxyacetic acid during in vitro culture of tobacco mesophyll protoplasts are secreted into the vacuole where they constitute the bulk of labeled proteins. In addition, these proteins continue to be synthesized in protoplast-derived cultured cells and their synthesis is strictly correlated with the size of the cel...

Plant protoplasts show physiological perceptions and responses to hormones, metabolites, environmental cues, and pathogen-derived elicitors, similar to cell-autonomous responses in intact tissues and plants. The development of defined protoplast transient expression systems for high-throughput screening and systematic characterization of gene functions has greatly contributed to elucidating pla...

Improvement of production of an extracellular β-glucosidase with high activity by Brettanomyces anomalus PSY-001 was performed by using recursive protoplast fusion in a genome-shuffling format. The initial population was generated by ultraviolet irradiation, ultrasonic mutagenesis and, then, subjected to recursive protoplast fusion. Mutant strains exhibiting significantly higher β-glucosidase a...

Cells of the osmotolerant yeast Saccharomyces rouxii were transformed to protoplasts in good yield (85%) by digesting cell walls with snail-gut enzyme in the presence of 10 mM dithioerythritol, 0.1 M sodium phosphate buffer (pH 6.8), and 2.0 M KCl. The requirement for 2.0 M KCl compares with that for S. bisporus var. mellis (another osmotolerant species) and contrasts with the 0.3 to 0.8 M KCl ...

When the cell wall of Bacillus subtilis is removed by lysozyme and the resultant protoplasts are plated on hypertonic soft agar medium, each protoplast forms an L colony. L bodies from such L colonies again plate as L-colony-forming units (CFU). However, if protoplasts or L bodies are "conditioned" by 1 h of incubation in 0.4% casein hydrolysate medium and then incubated in 25% gelatin medium f...

Protoplasts of Aureobasidium pullulans are capable of producing pullulan. Biosynthesis of the polymer pullulan required induction with kinetics similar to those of whole cells. The protoplasts also produced a heteropolysaccharide component containing mannose, glucose, and galactose. The relative proportions of the pullulan and heteropolysaccharide fractions were a function of glucose concentrat...

This method is adapted from a protocol described by Grimsley et al. (1977). For more information about P. patens as a model organism, see The Moss Physcomitrella patens: A Novel Model System for Plant Development and Genomic Studies (Cove et al. 2009a). For details about the growth of P. patens on cellophane overlay plates, see Culturing the Moss Physcomitrella patens (Cove et al. 2009b). For p...

A few entomophthoralean species are able to multiply in a protoplast form. The polysaccharide synthases which synthesize the cell wall are inactivated in this form. An inhibitor of one of the key enzymes of wall synthesis, glucan synthase, was isolated from entomophthoralean protoplasts, using silica column chromatography and HPLC. Thin-layer and gas chromatography revealed free fatty acids in ...