Abstract
In Arabidopsis thaliana we demonstrate that dying root hairs provide an easy and rapid in vivo model for the morphological identification of apoptotic-like programmed cell death (AL-PCD) in plants. The model described here is transferable between species, can be used to investigate rates of AL-PCD in response to various treatments and to identify modulation of AL-PCD rates in mutant/transgenic plant lines facilitating rapid screening of mutant populations in order to identify genes involved in AL-PCD regulation.
Highlights
Programmed cell death (PCD) can be described as the organised destruction of a cell [1,2] and plays an important role in many plant developmental pathways including xylogenesis, embryogenesis, root and leaf development and senescence [3,4]
McCabe and Leaver [11] showed that when Arabidopsis thaliana cells are subjected to a 10 min, 55° C heat shock over 90% of the cells die by apoptotic-like PCD (AL-PCD), while the remaining cells died in an uncontrolled manner termed necrosis, a rapid death that is not associated with cytoplasmic retraction
As observed with cell suspension cultures, root hair cells exhibiting this morphology do not fluoresce when stained with fluorescein diacetate (FDA) at this timepoint (6 hr after heatshock)
Summary
Programmed cell death (PCD) can be described as the organised destruction of a cell [1,2] and plays an important role in many plant developmental pathways including xylogenesis, embryogenesis, root and leaf development and senescence [3,4]. In response to biotic and abiotic stress, suspension culture cells have been shown to undergo nuclear condensation and internucleosomal DNA cleavage [6], activate caspase-like activity [9] and release cytochrome c from the mitochondria [10]. Both animal and plant cells demonstrate condensation of the cytoplasm. In plant cells the retraction and condensation of the cytoplasm leaves a visible gap between the cell wall and the plasma membrane resulting in a specific corpse morphology [11], a hallmark feature that has been a useful
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