Abstract
Land plants have evolved on dry land and developed surface barriers to protect themselves from environmental stresses. We have previously reported that polymerization of a natural extracellular substance (ECS) on the outer surface of animals by electron beam or plasma irradiation, can give rise to a nano-scale layer, termed the “NanoSuit”, which can keep small animals alive under the high vacuum of a scanning electron microscope (SEM). In the present research, we have focused on plants, using petals of cherry blossoms, as experimental specimens and examined their behavior under high vacuum conditions. Experiments on healthy living petals have demonstrated that without any pre-treatment, the overall morphology of specimens is well preserved and intact after imaging in an SEM, suggesting that natural substances on the petal surface behave like animal ECS and form a NanoSuit following irradiation with an electron beam. Furthermore, we have shown that the surface material can be extracted with chloroform and polymerized into a free-standing membrane by plasma irradiation. From our results, we conclude that surface materials, which have the ability to prevent water loss under natural conditions, increase the barrier ability and can protect plants under high vacuum conditions.
Highlights
Land plants have evolved on dry land and developed surface barriers to protect themselves from desiccation, UV exposure, high irradiation, and other abiotic environmental stresses[1,2,3]
To understand how organisms can avoid desiccation in a high vacuum would be a major advance in an attempt to more fully understand the role of the surface barrier in protecting the organism
Since the basic concept of the NanoSuit is to use the extracellular substance (ECS) covering some animals, we focused on the natural substances covering the surface of plants
Summary
Land plants have evolved on dry land and developed surface barriers to protect themselves from desiccation, UV exposure, high irradiation, and other abiotic environmental stresses[1,2,3]. Field emission scanning electron microscopes (FE-SEMs) are instruments for observing surface fine structure at high resolution. It is, necessary to evacuate the specimen chamber to a high vacuum level (10−3– 10−6 Pa) to prevent scattering by molecules in the air. The treatments include chemical fixation prior to dehydration, freeze-drying or critical point drying, and metal coating (conventional methods)[8] These complex procedures, preclude the direct observation of living tissues. Consists of glycerin and electrolytes and find that the fine structure of the SSE treated specimens is superior to that of conventionally prepared specimens[13] These investigations of the NanoSuit have been carried out mainly on animal specimens. Direct observations of living petals in the hydrated state can be performed with high resolution in an FE-SEM
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