Švegždienė D.

Space botany in Lithuania. II. Study on root gravity sensing during satellite “Bion-11” flight [Kosminė botanika Lietuvoje. II. Šaknų gravitacijos jutimo tyrimas palydovo „Bion-11“ skrydžio metu]

Abstract This paper addresses the space experiments performed on board of the unmanned satellite “Bion-11” in 1997. To detail root gravity sensing in stimulus-free microgravity environment, researchers from the Institute of Botany developed an automatically operating centrifuge “Neris-8” to grow garden cress seedlings and to chemically fix them at the end of the experiments. There was examined behaviour of gravity sensors – amyloplasts within cap cells of roots responding to stimulation by artificial fractional gravity. The static of amyloplasts was determined in roots after continuous growth for 25 h in microgravity, 0.005, 0.02, 0.1 and 1-g environment. The movement kinetics of amyloplasts was studied in roots during the exposition to microgravity after 24-h growth in 1-g environment or conversely. Quantitative study on the patterns of positioning and movement of plastids was performed by light microscopy. The results obtained led us to detail a mode of gravity sensing by roots in which the interactions between moving amyloplasts, cytoplasm and cytoskeleton were discussed.

Doi https://doi.org/10.1515/botlit-2016-0015

Keywords amyloplast, garden cress, gravity sensing, microgravity, root, statocyte

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