cell division rates - (Jan/26/2015 )

Hello,

I would like to measure differences in cell division rates for multiple plant species. I have been trying to find protocols. I would like to do this overtime (getting rates) so I would prefer it to be nondestructable. 

Does anyone know of any such methods or have they come across them?

Thanks for your help!

1. The simplest method I can think of is counting cells at regular intervals. 

2. There are many other methods for cell cycle analysis, especially using flow cytometer.

3. None of these methods are destructive, because you will take out a small aliquot of cells from the flask for analysis, while the rest of the bunch merrily grows.

Hi CPRES,

Thanks for the reply. I should have mentioned originally that I am comparing different plant species and specifically in leaf tissue. And I would like to measure the same leaf overtime, to get a rate of cell division for a particular plant species.

Thanks again for replying

Oh. We tend to get wrapped up in our own world and think that everybody does the same boring things. Apparently there are more exciting things :)

Whole leaves, if they are small enough, can be analysed spectrophotometrically; you could try assaying for ABA at its optical density. ABA acculumalates in the cell as it ages. This is all I can think of. This could be nondestructive.

Hello Srilatha Dharmavaram,

Your suggestion using a spectrophotometric sounds like it would be a good, non-destructive and fairly easy method. Do you have a citation for a paper that has performed such a method? Thanks for replying to my original question!

I may be wrong here, but I thought in the case of leaves and other differentiated structures that the growth of leaves is due to expansion of the cells by water rather than division. If I recall correctly, all the division happens in the leaf primordia, and then the cells are swelled by water to produce the final size/shape.