BRAINCAKETissue Culture and Micropropagation
Tissue culture is the growth of new tissues, organs or whole plants from a few cells or a small piece of tissue in a sterile nutrient medium. When it is used to produce very large numbers of plant clones, it is called micropropagation.
Steps in micropropagation
1. A small piece of tissue, the explant, is cut from the plant to be cloned, usually from a meristem (for example a shoot tip or bud).
2. The explant is sterilised, for example with dilute bleach or ethanol, to kill bacteria and fungi. All work is done using aseptic technique.
3. The explant is placed on a sterile culture medium (agar) containing glucose, amino acids, minerals and plant hormones, including auxins and cytokinins.
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Key terms in this lesson
- meristem
- A region of unspecialised, actively dividing plant cells, such as those at shoot and root tips, from which new tissues develop.
- aseptic technique
- A set of practices used to prevent unwanted microorganisms contaminating a culture and to stop the culture escaping into the environment.
More in Cloning and Biotechnology
- Natural Clones in Plants
- Vegetative Propagation
- Artificial Clones - Cuttings
- Pros and Cons of Plant Cloning
- Natural Clones in Animals
- Artificial Twinning
- Somatic Cell Nuclear Transfer
- Pros and Cons of Animal Cloning
All 21 lessons in Cloning and Biotechnology · All OCR A-level Biology topics