Plant tissue culture article critical review - Book Report/Review Example

Taking gravity away, increasing or decreasing it, may certainly have serious ramifications on an organism’s wellbeing. For their project, the researchers exposed a culture of cells from the winter annual plant Arabidopsis Thaliana, which is a popular choice among experimental biologist since it has one of the smallest genomes for a complex multicellular organism, thus making genetic studies more feasible, (Greilhuber et.al.) to a wide range of gravimetric variances. This plant was also chosen because its cellular structure has the unique ability to respond to changes in gravity even though it is not a fully developed plant with the usual structure associated with the perception of gravity.

The authors postulate that changes in gravity and/ or weightlessness will produce both environmental and mechanical stress on the organism producing a stress on the molecular level. This particular type of stress from other sources can eventually lead to further tolerance as well as adaptation by the organism. However, the study of stress on the molecular level in biology is one of the most difficult and incongruent research issues in the field and possibly one of the complications of this research project.

One of the universally accepted reactions to stress in biological organisms is the induction of HSP’s, which is found to occur both early and late in the phases of stress. These act as protective protein chaperons during the process of stress to help minimize harm to the organism. The authors used quantitative real time polymerase chain reaction (RT-qPCR) to evaluate the levels of the proteins Hsp17.6A and Hsp101 in the biological sample following its exposure to the various gravimetric situations.

Their experimental study involved the following four gravimetric environments: Hypergravity, at both 3G and 16G levels mimicking the various G forces that are present during rocket takeoff; weightlessness, such as that in the condition