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 efficientin vitro inducing system. Several typical characteristics of apoptosis including chromatin condensation, margination 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-operatedin vitro system to study the apoptotic mechanism in plant and the apoptosis in plant cells may share similar pathways to apoptosis in animal cells.