Putrescine and spermidine uptake in carrot (Daucus carota L., cv "Tip top") protoplasts and isolated vacuoles was studied. Protoplasts and vacuoles accumulated polyamines very quickly, with maximum absorption within 1 to 2 minutes. The insertion of a washing layer containing 100 millimolar unlabeled putrescine or spermidine did not change this pattern, but strongly reduced the uptake of putrescine and spermidine in protoplasts and in vacuoles. The dependence of spermidine uptake on the external concentration was linear up to the highest concentrations tested in protoplasts, while that in vacuoles showed saturation kinetics below 1 millimolar (Km = 61.8 micromolar) and a linear component from 1 to 50 millimolar. Spermidine uptake in protoplasts increased linearly between pH 5.5 and 7.0, while there was a distinct optimum at pH 7.0 for vacuoles. Preincubation of protoplasts with 1 millimolar Ca2+ affected only surface binding but not transport into the cells. Nonpermeant polycations such as La3+ and polylysine inhibited spermidine uptake into protoplasts. Compartmentation studies showed that putrescine and spermidine were partly vacuolar in location and that exogenously appfied spermidine could be recovered inside the cells. The characteristics of the protoplast and vacuolar uptake system induce us to put forward the hypothesis of a passive influx of polyamines through the plasmalemma and of the presence of a carrier-mediated transport system localized in the tonoplast.Polyamines are ubiquitous in higher plants. They may act as growth regulators, membrane stabilizers, senescence retardants, stress metabolites, and so forth (for reviews, see Refs. 5 and 18).For many of these functions, transport of polyamines has to be postulated. Recently, evidence has increased for both long and short distance transport of polyamines in higher plants (2,3,7,14,15 since cell fractionation studies revealed that most of the spermidine taken up by the cells (about 70%) had been adsorbed to the cell wall, whereas most of the putrescine taken up (70%) was recovered in the cytoplasm (15).From this differential subcellular distribution of polyamines, it is obvious that two overlapping processes have to be studied separately in order to gain the desired information on the uptake of polyamines: (a) the interactions of the positively charged polyamines with the negatively charged cell wall components and (b) the uptake of polyamines into the cell as a transport process across the plasmalemma (and then the tonoplast). The present study deals mainly with the second point.The availability of protoplasts and vacuoles had the added benefit of also allowing a study of the subcellular compartmentation of accumulated polyamines with the vacuole as the focal point. The vacuole as a temporary storage site of polyamines would explain the often observed discrepancy between the high intracellular polyamine concentrations of up to 1 mm and the low physiological concentrations needed for a proper functioning of the polyamines (10-100 ,uM) (4). Unf...