Stress Response Monitoring of Photoautotrophic Higher Plant Suspension Cultures by Fluorescence Imaging for High-Throughput Toxic Compound Screening

Abstract

Photoautotrophic suspension cultures have been established from various model and crop plants and proved to be valuable and robust experimental system to assess coordinated responses of primary and secondary metabolism to metabolic and stress related signals. The use of suspension cultures combines the ease of handling microalgae in microtiter plates with the advantage of testing physiological responses of higher plants, notably in combination with the assessment of the response of photosynthetic activity by PAM chlorophyll fluorescence imaging as well as monitoring changes in secondary metabolite production and ROS formation by steady state fluorescence of plant fluorophores or introduced fluorescent probes. Photoautotrophic cultures provide various advantages as fast, highly sensitive, robust and high-throughput experimental system for screening and characterization of the impact of toxic compounds on higher plants. This opinion article discusses and critically evaluates the potential of photoautotrophic cultures of higher plants in combination with fluorescence imaging assays in microtiter plates as a complement to existing guidelines for testing the toxicity of chemicals in plants.

The Use of PTI-Marker Genes to Identify Novel Compounds that Establish Induced Resistance in Rice

“…In order to minimize screening efforts, plant cell suspension cultures (PCSCs) provide simple model systems with notable advantages such as limited needs for special growth infrastructures, homogeneity of the material and fast accessibility of each single cell to exogenous stimuli [24][25][26]. Moreover, PCSCs can be proliferated by subcultivation, leading to a limited need for fresh plant material; this in contrast to screening platforms that use seedlings or plant parts [24][25][26]. Furthermore, the use of undifferentiated, totipotent cells or callus permits to screen for general, tissue-unspecific plant responses.…”

Noninvasive determination of toxic stress biomarkers by high-throughput screening of photoautotrophic cell suspension cultures with multicolor fluorescence imaging

“…Cell suspension cultures are grown in axenic conditions, the cells are exposed to all treatments directly and homogeneously, which results in fast and homogeneous signal readouts. Cell suspension cultures are suitable for experiments in microtiter plates as indicated by herbicide testing [11–13], allowing for high-throughput data acquisition. Besides the application of cell suspension cultures in biotechnology [14–18] and basic research of various processes at the cellular level [19–23], successful studies of herbicides [12, 13, 24], toxicity screenings [4], salt tolerance [25] and deriving crop lines resistant to various toxicant types [26, 27] were also conducted.…”