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Hormonal mechanisms for differentiation in plant tissue culture

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Summary

Cells possess extraordinary powers to organize their molecular processes not only to maintain a cell in a given steady state but also to recognize that state during differentiation. Regulation of these organizational forces appears to be under the control of chemical factors, and a hormonal concept of regulation has evolved. Hormones have been considered to act by reacting with a specific target site. This may be part of their mode of action, but I would like to suggest that a hormone enters and becomes part of a total molecular resonance system. In so doing, the entire molecular system of the cell is modified.

Of the known plant hormones, the cytokinins, because of their role in experimentally induced cell division and differentiation, serve as a probe of hormonal involvement in differentiation. Cultured somatic cells of tobacco plants can be induced to undergo differentiation by addition of cytokinin and auxin to the medium. Studies of the cytokinin hormones show a series of diverse molecular involvements. The archetype cytokinin, N6-(Δ2-isopentenyl) adenosine (i6Ado), occurs in some molecular species of tRNA where it plays a vital role in the codon-anticodon interaction of tRNA and m-RNA. i6Ado under-goes extensive metabolism in the tobacco tissue. It is either degraded to adenosine or converted to derivatives that possess biological activity. It is perhaps, therefore, more correct to consider the hormone function as being derived from this total metabolic web.

The normal somatic cells of tobacco cultures spontaneously change occasionally into an autonomous form that requires no external growth factors. This line of cells synthesizes i6Ado. The metabolic web of the hormone-dependent strain can be perturbed by added auxin but such is not the case in the autonomous strain. These data provide some insight into the altered state of cytokinin activity in which a cell line changes into an autonomous form. Curiously, in become independent of the requirement for exogenous cytokinin, the autonomous tissue becomes sensitive to added cytokinin. i6Ado also inhibits the growth of lines of mammalian cancer cells grown in culture.

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Abbreviations

Ade:

adenine

Ado:

adenosine

i6Ado:

N6-(Δ2-isopentenyl)adenosine

Ado-CO-thr:

N-(9-(β-D-ribofuranosyl-9H)purin-6-ylcarbamoyl]threonine

Z:

zeatin (N 6-(trans-3-hydroxymethyl-3-methylbut-2-enyl)adenine

ZR:

ribosylzeatin (N 6-(trans-3-hydroxymethyl-3-methylbut-2-enyl)adenosine

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Biochemistry, McMaster University Medical School, Hamilton, Ontario, Canada

    Ross H. Hall

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  1. Ross H. Hall
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Presented in the formal symposium on Information Transfer in Eukaryotic Cells, at the 26th Annual Meeting of the Tissue Culture Association, Montreal, Quebec, June 2–5, 1975.

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Hall, R.H. Hormonal mechanisms for differentiation in plant tissue culture. In Vitro 12, 216–224 (1976). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02796444

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