Can tissue culture turn a small mutated patch of a tobacco plant into plants that pass on ruffled leaves?

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Somatic mutations may carry genetic characteristics useful for plant improvement. In this plant tissue-culture regeneration experiment, researchers cultured meristem tissue to obtain healthy plants from a chimeral mutation in a tobacco plant (Nicotiana tabacum L.) infected with tobacco vein mottling virus.

Parts of some leaves originating from a narrow mutated strip on one side of the stalk were ruffled. The other leaves on the plant were smooth. Researchers excised thin layers of cells from the meristematic domes of apical and axillary buds on an axillary shoot (sucker) that originated at the edge of the mutated strip. They cultured these explants on a shoot regeneration medium.

The regenerated plants included two with ruffled leaves and 59 with smooth leaves. Plants of both leaf types had the normal somatic chromosome number, showed no virus symptoms, were self-fertile, and produced abundant seed.

The researchers also assessed selfed progeny and used doubled-haploid culture. Selfed progeny of the regenerated ruffled-leaf plants included both smooth- and ruffled-leaf plants, whereas all progeny of the regenerated smooth-leaf plants had smooth leaves. Selfed progeny of doubled haploids cultured from a ruffled-leaf haploid plant had ruffled leaves, while selfed progeny of doubled haploids cultured from a smooth-leaf haploid plant had smooth leaves.

The study concludes that recovering somatic mutants through tissue culture offers a way to obtain plants with potentially useful mutated characteristics.