Use of Confocal Laser as Light Source Reveals Stomata-Autonomous Function

Abstract

In most terrestrial plants, stomata open during the day to maximize the update of CO2 for photosynthesis, but they close at night to minimize water loss. Blue light, among several environmental factors, controls this process. Stomata response to diverse stimuli seems to be dictated by the behaviour of neighbour stomata creating leaf areas of coordinated response. Here individual stomata of Arabidopsis leaves were illuminated with a short blue-light pulse by focusing a confocal argon laser. Beautifully, the illuminated stomata open their pores, whereas their dark-adapted neighbours unexpectedly experience no change. This induction of individual stomata opening by low fluence rates of blue light was disrupted in the phototropin1 phototropin2 (phot1 phot2) double mutant, which exhibits insensitivity of stomatal movements in blue-illuminated epidermal strips. The irradiation of all epidermal cells making direct contact with a given stoma in both wild type and phot1 phot2 plants does not trigger its movement. These results unravel the stoma autonomous function in the blue light response and illuminate the implication of PHOT1 and/or PHOT2 in such response. The micro spatial heterogeneity that solar blue light suffers in partially shaded leaves under natural conditions highlights the physiological significance of the autonomous stomatal behaviour.

Open or Close the Gate – Stomata Action Under the Control of Phytohormones in Drought Stress Conditions

“…In contrast, scanning microscopy (SEM) offers high resolution images of stomata but requires expensive equipment and is not suitable for collecting large numbers of probes (Lawson et al, 1998). Recently, a popular technique in stomatal observations is confocal microscopy (Cañamero et al, 2006). As long as a proper technique that is not controversial in regards to its influence on stomatal response is not applied, all aperture measurements will be under discussion.…”

Infrared quantum ghost imaging of living and undisturbed plants

“…Because the plant was imaged in darkness for QGI, over the duration of the measurement the stomata began to close. This is a reaction due to environmental changes, unlike measurement-induced stomata changes from high intensity light in conventional microscopy [2]. Some of the transmission features look different between the ghost images and the NIR camera images in Fig.…”

“…Furthermore, because absorption and scattering cross-sections are so small, these methods require significant input light intensities. Plants are particularly light sensitive because of photosynthesis [2]. Thus, satisfying the desire to be label-free generally requires sacrificing the intent to limit intrusion onto the sample.…”

Reconstruction of 3d Digital Image of Weepingforsythia Pollen

“…There have been numerous scientific papers employing confocal microscope in plant biology since it was first introduced, and this technology is very important for plant science researchers (Hepler and Gunning, 1998;Taira et al, 2004;Meckel et al, 2007;Cañamero et al, 2006). Since the advantage of confocal microscope is the ability to produce 3-dimensional reconstructions of specimens as mentioned above, the aims of the present studies is to reconstruct 3D image of Weeping Forsythia pollen with confocal microscope.…”