Abstract
Programmed cell death(PCD) takes part in an important process of the life system in the higher plant, such as, formation of vascular bundles and hypersensitive cell death against pathogen. Recently, the mechanism of PCD in the plant has been gradually clarified, however, in the case of higher plants, it's difficult to observe the morphological changes in the individual cell during the PCD. So, we paid attention to the using moss plants in which main tissue consists of monolayer cells. When we applied the supernatant of the culture medium of Erwinia carotovora to a model moss plant Physcomitrella patens. 70 % of the chloronema cells died in 24h and their chloroplasts moved to the cell center several hours before the cell death. After the chloroplast aggregation, we succeeded in capturing the vacuolar membrane dynamics during the vacuolar collapse by using a vacuolar membrane marker of AtVAM3-GFP.
