抄録
Complex, mobile spherical structures continuous with the vacuolar limiting membrane were identified in young cotyledons of Arabidopsis by expression of a vacuolar membrane marker(r-TIP-GFP)and by electron microscopy, and were named“bulbs”. These structures are cytoplasm wrapped by two layers of intricately folded membrane; both layers are continuous with the vacuolar limiting membrane. When visualized using r-TIP-GFP, the fluorescence intensity of bulbs is about3-fold higher than that of the vacuolar limiting membrane. However, bulbs were negative for GFP-AtRab75, another vacuolar marker. These results suggest that bulbs form a subregion in the continuous vacuolar membrane that concentrate some proteins and segregate others.