Re: nicotine and pings

Andreas Wistuba (A.Wistuba@DKFZ-Heidelberg.DE)
Fri, 5 Aug 1994 14:16:26 GMT+1

>Well, Andreas, to be entirely accurate isn't there the possibility of
>meristem tissue culture near the growth tip? If I recall some reading I
>did, cells near the growth tips of orchids have been tissue cultured before
>they were infected by the virus from the rest of the plant. Virus-free
>plants were rescued from infected plants this way.

Theoretically that is true. However most tissue cultures are started
from seeds or from shoot-tips (containing the meristem + some
leaf-primordia). Meristems according to literature are extremely
difficult to do and usually are only prepared to get rid of viruses.
The success rate is very low. Most of the time when people speak of
meristemming a plant they actually mean establishing a shoot tip
which is difficult enough. I succeeded establishing shoot tips of
several Sarracenias and Nepenthes alata and allready needed quite a
lot of shoots to have one clean and growing culture.

Andreas
Andreas Wistuba
A.Wistuba@Dkfz-Heidelberg.de
Phone: +49-621-705471 Fax: +49-621-711307