Programmed Cell Death during Leaf Senescence in.docVIP

杜仲叶片衰老过程中的细胞程序性死亡 Programmed Cell Death during Leaf Senescence in Eucommia ulmoides Oliv.* 生命科学学院 植物分子与发育学系 98级 江枫 Abstract Leaf tissues from Eucommia ulmoides Oliv. trees were used to study the mechanism of programmed cell death (PCD) during leaf senescence. Here, we show that DNA ladders were detected by gel electrophoresis only in senescent leaves. DNA fragmentation and nuclear DNA condensation were further confirmed by using the terminal deoxynucleotidyl transferase (TdT)-mediated dUTP nick end in situ labeling (TUNEL) method. A 20 kDa DNase was detected only in senescent leaves, which suggested that fragmented DNA would be caused by this DNase. Keywords: DNase―Leaf senescence―Programmed cell death (PCD) ―Eucommia ulmoides Oliv. Cell death is a basic biological process that functions in many aspects of animal and plant development and in their responses to stress (Greenberg 1996, Wang et al. 1996, Martins and Earnshaw 1997). Studies on animals have shown that the execution of programmed cell death (PCD) or apoptosis is controlled by a multistep signaling pathway (McConkey and Orrenius 1994, Stewart 1994). Like in animals, it is called as physiological cell death for development and defense (Greenberg 1996), so it may be that any complex multicellular organism will be found cell death a usuful process to have in its repertoire. There are many examples on programmed cell death during plant development, such as senescence of the carpel and petal (Orzáez and Granell 1997a, b), xylogenesis (Mittler and Lam 1995, Fukuda 1996, 1997, Wang and Cui, 1998), aleurone deletion (Wang, M. et al. 1996), the death of the root cap cells (Wang, H. et al. 1996) and somatic embryogenesis (McCabe et al. 1997). Leaf senescence is the final stage of leaf development, which has been thought to be a type of programmed cell death (Noodén and Leopold 1978,Gan and Amasico 1997). The mechanism which controls this process must be genetically regulated by autonomous (internal) factors s