Accumulation of Amino-acids in Plant Cell Tissue Cultures

Abstract

IT was recently reported that when plant cell tissue cultures derived from sycamore cambial callus (Acer pseudoplantanus L) were grown with limited access to air, there was a marked reduction in the amount of leucoanthocyanins produced although there was little effect on aldohexose concentration¹. It has now been found that, in limited air, cell cultures from callus of sycamore, bean (Phaseolus vulgaris, L), rose (Rosa sp., var. Dr. van Fleet), and Haplopapus gracilis grown on agar slopes as before¹, all show a marked increase in the amount of free amino-acids compared with tissue grown with free access to air. Again little or no change was found in the concentration of sugars (Table 1), nor, in the case of the sycamore callus, in the total perchloracetic acid-soluble ribonucleic acid. Analyses of the changes with time in the relative proportions of carbon dioxide and oxygen, using a Fisher gas analyser, in the culture bottles showed that, as expected, there was a build-up of carbon dioxide to ∼20 per cent and a decrease of oxygen to ∼0.5 per cent in the sealed bottles.