Development of a probenecid-sensitive Lucifer Yellow transport system in vacuolating oat aleurone protoplasts
Oat aleurone protoplasts, maintained in liquid culture over a period of five days, have been shown to develop an uptake system capable of transporting the membrane-impermeant probe Lucifer Yellow CH (LYCH). The dye was completely excluded from the densely cytoplasmic, early developmental stages but its uptake increased exponentially after the protoplasts had been cultured for between 2 and 5 days. Culturing induced vacuolation and uptake of the dye was largely restricted to highly vacuolate protoplasts. No cytoplasmic staining was evident. In vacuolate protoplasts uptake was linear with time and saturated with increasing substrate concentration. Low temperature, and addition of the drug probenecid to the incubation medium, completely eliminated LYCH uptake. In contrast to unconjugated LYCH, LYCH-dextrans (Mr 10,000 and 40,000) were excluded from the protoplasts. The data negate simple diffusion and fluid-phase endocytosis as possible candidates for dye uptake and suggest, instead, the development of highly co-ordinated membrane transport systems on both plasmalemma and tonoplast.