Limited ventilation causes stress and changes in Arabidopsis morphological, physiological and molecular phenotype during in vitro growth.

A huge number of experiments in plant biology are conducted in sterile, sealed containers, providing environmental stability and full control of factors influencing the plant system. With respect to roots the in vitro growth has another benefit – the ease of conducting visual observations when grown in transparent media. Moreover, straightforward measurements of in vitro grown root systems make them a sensitive and convenient sensor of multiple stresses which may occur during experiments. In order to optimize root nematode infection tests for Arabidopsis mutants with relatively mild phenotypes, two Petri dish sealing techniques were tested (permeable medical adhesive tape and a popular non-permeable plastic film). Using standard experimental settings applied for infection tests, the root architecture, nematode infections, ion leakage, efficiency of photosynthesis, ethylene (ET) production, and CO2 accumulation were monitored in Arabidopsis thaliana Ws-0 wild-type and lsd1 (lesion stimulating disease 1) plants, which is a conditional dependent programmed cell death mutant.