Ultrastructural Study on Differentiation of Plastid in Panax ginseng Root Tip

인삼(Panax ginseng) 근단의 색소본 분화에 관한 미세구조적 연구

The ultrastructural changes and differentiation mechanism of chromoplasts and leucoplasts from Proplastids in root tip cells of Panax ginseng seedlings were studied with transmission electron microscope. Initial cells have so many proplastids with a few osmiophilic droplets and a lot of mitochon dria at early stage of germination, therefore electron density of cytoplasm is generally higher than that of the other cells just like periblem, plerome and root cap. Proplastids are observed in the initial cells, but only leucoplasts appeared in the central root cap cells. Because root cap cells are derived ultimately from initial cells, the cell organelles in the root cap cells are directly related by those of initial cells. This result postulates that leucoplast is diferentiated from proplastid, and this is the same with other's concepts. On the contrary, the precise observations of chromoplast with crystalline inclusions in the peripheral root cap cells can conclude the direct pathway of chromoplast development from proplastid. Because of the differences of these result from those of other experiments, new scheme of plastid development, direct differentiation of chromoplast from proplastid, can be postulated. And this is the originality of this research on the differentiation of plastids.