Roslyn

Right now, I have tissue culture plantlets, some growing in MS+BAP for shoot proliferation, and some growing in MS without hormones, for rooting. I would like to make a banana cell suspension. Does anyone have any idea of how to do this? I think what I have to do is go from plantlet to callus to cell suspension, but I have no experience making a callus either. I would appreciate any advice.
Thanks!
-Roslyn

Gabe15

Establishing cell suspension lines can be rather difficult, and it's not useful to the hobbyist unless you just want to experiment a lot and have a lab. You can do multiplication with it, but the mutation rate is quite high so it is not practiced for that. Normally, it is done just for genetic engineering so single cells can be transformed and regenerated into plants.

This document is the basic guide: http://bananas.bioversityinternation...ons/tg8_en.pdf

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Growing bananas in Colorado, Washington, Hawaii since 2004. Commercial banana farmer, 200+ varieties.

Roslyn

Thanks for your help. Actually, I do work in a lab. I am a PhD student studying black Sigatoka. I won't be genetically engineering these cells, but unless I can figure out another way of doing a certain experiment, I need to make a cell suspension.

I found the guide that you gave me the link to, but I have very little experience with tissue culture in general, so I don't really know what I'm doing, beyond getting shoot and root proliferation of the plantlets.

Roslyn

Hm, since I don't have to re-establish plants from the cell suspension, I may be able to take some leaves and use pectinase to break apart the cells to make a mesophyll cell suspension. It seems like that would be a lot easier, if it works.

If anyone else is interested in this, I can post an update to let you know how it goes.