Apoptosis of carrot nuclei inin vitro system induced by cytochrome c

The apoptosis of carrot nuclei induced in cytosol of carrot cells by cytochrome c is reported. This kind of cell-free apoptosis system of plant, CS-100, is an efficient In vitro inducing system. Several typical characteristics of apoptosis including chromatin condensation, margina-tion and apoptotic bodies could be detected, and the degradation of genome in carrot nuclei into nucleosomal fragments could be detected. TUNEL assay shows the specific breakage of 3'-OH ends of DNA strand. The results indicate that CS-100 is an efficient and easily-operated in vitro system to study the apoptotic mechanism in plant and the apoptosis in plant cells may share similar pathways to apoptosis in animal cells.