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Cloning 101: Plant Tissue Culture
An overview of the fascinating process of plant tissue culture!
Cloning is possible. Yep, right here, right now. Even though we aren’t at the stage where we can make another copy of ourselves in an instant, we can clone plant tissues, which is one step closer to the cloning we think of.
Plant tissue culturing is a fascinating process. It is the creation of new plant tissue by transferring it into a nutrient media to cultivate it under controlled conditions. Also known as micropropagation, plant tissue culture can increase the production yield among other benefits.
How does plant culturing even work?
As suggested by the name, plant tissue cultures all start with a plant, specifically small pieces of plants known as explants 🌱. Explants can range from the stem of the plant to the leaves and can come from any type of plant.
These explants are then put into a nutrient medium to help them grow 🧪and undergo the culture process. There are different types of nutrient mediums that can be utilized, as discussed by Plant Cell Technology:
- Murashige and Skoog (MS) medium
- Linsmaier and Skoog (LS) medium
- Gamborg (B5) medium
- Nitsch and Nitsch (NN) medium
- White’s Medium
Each culture medium includes many similar components of the nutrients necessary for micropropagation, but with different concentrations to adapt to certain plant preferences or tendencies. For instance, LS medium has a higher concentration of thiamine hypochlorite that is integral to certain cell development and growth. Based on the growth characteristics desired, the plant can be cultured in a specific medium to accomplish those goals.
Certain growth mediums are even combined to create the ideal nutrient combination for plant culture, allowing for more variability and options within the process.
