ASGSB 1999 Annual Meeting Abstracts

FORMATION OF TRACHEARY ELEMENTS IN TOMATO CALLUS IN MICROGRAVITY: ITA-OSU STUDENT EXPERIMENT. A. Madlung, S. Peskin, and T.L. Lomax. Dept. of Botany and Plant Pathology and Center for Gene Research and Biotechnology, Oregon State University, Corvallis, OR.

As part of the Instrumentation Technology Associates Inc. (ITA) student outreach program an experiment from Oregon State University was flown on the STS-95 space shuttle mission in October/November 1998. Callus cells of tomato (Lycopersicon esculentum, Mill. cv. VFN8) and an isogenic, single-gene mutant of the same line, diageotropica (dgt), were subjected to microgravity on STS-95. The callus was grown on MS medium containing auxin and cytokinin. After 9d, ground controls and callus which had been exposed to microgravity were either fixed in glutaraldehyde and prepared for scanning electron microscopy (SEM) or macerated in CrO₃/HCl and used for counting tracheary elements (TE) in a hemacytometer. While wild-type callus flown on the space shuttle showed a decrease in the formation of TES when compared to callus cells kept on the ground, the dgt mutant exhibited an increase in the development of TEs during spaceflight. Due to the small sample size these trends are statistically inconclusive, though suggestive, and warrant a repeat experiment with a larger sample size. 

(Supported by NASA: NAG5-6373 and the Studienstiftung des deutschen Volkes)

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