Abstract
In the context of heavy metal tolerance, plant cell wall could be the one of the major organelles involved in heavy metal sequestration and detoxification. Here, we demonstrate that heavy-metals were highly accumulated in the cell wall in the Ni-tolerant tobacco cells, which has been established from tobacco BY-2 cells and named NIT cells. When cells were cultured with NiCl2, 20% of total cellular Ni was existed in the cell wall of the NIT cells, although almost all Ni was found in the symplast of the wild-type (WT) cells. Similar result was also found in the contents of Fe, Mn and Zn in the cell wall of the NIT cells cultured without Ni. To identify the metal-binding site, cell wall was treated with different pH conditions, protease or other reagents. The property of this metal-binding site was now under investigated.
