Test of an In Vivo Method to Detect Chloroplast Division in Crop Plants Part II: Verification of the Phenomenon by Germplasm Methods and Confocal Microscopy

摘要

This article is the second installment in a series about a novel spectrofluorometric method that apparently allows for in vivo observation of division of chloroplast populations in leaves of Arabidopsis thaliana. The first installment of this series (1) discussed a novel phenomenon wherein chloroplast efficiency was shown to plot in discrete groups. This exploration resulted in the development of a spectrofluorometric method that apparently allows for in vivo observation of division of chloroplast populations in leaves of Arabidopsis thaliana mutants. This second installment deals with further testing of the phenomenon in sugarcane and especially Amaryllis; data from wheat, Narcissus, and other plants are mentioned but not described. Also described are initial confocal microscopy studies, apparently confirming that the phenomenon is a result of a decrease in organelle efficiency during chloroplast division.