Speaker
Description
Euphorbia peplus (petty spurge, Euphorbiaceae) is an emerging developmental model system for the study of laticifers, the cells that produce and contain plant latex. In other plant families, synchrotron X-ray fluorescence has been used to image laticifers in intact plant leaves, e.g. to study hyperaccumulator species. Previous synchrotron X-ray fluorescence studies on Euphorbia latex exuded from a cut plant showed that Zn2+ ions are concentrated in the latex. We wanted to show that this was true in vivo, i.e. that Zn2+ ions are concentrated in laticifers in an intact E. peplus leaf. We imaged both lyophilized and fresh leaf samples, and confirmed that Zn2+ was concentrated in laticifers in leaves but not cotyledons. This result improves our knowledge of Euphorbia laticifers and paves the way for future experiments in hormonally-treated plants and/or transcriptomically silenced plants.
