Kernforschungsanlage Julich

Heide Schnabl

Ulrich Zimmermann

Gottfried Kuppers

Plant protoplasts are suspended in a solution of sodium alginate which is thereafter thickened by the addition of a soluble calcium or lanthanum salt to produce a matrix with large pores permeable to water and gas in which the protoplasts are held. The resulting material, in tape or spheroid form, when stored in a nutrient solution, will prolong the senescence of the protoplasts and increase their sensitivity to polluting materials. When such ribbons or particles are exposed to a polluting environment for a particular period of time, the effect of pollution can be detected by measuring the evolution of ethane or measuring the blocking of the enzyme ribulose-diphosphate-carboxylase, in the latter case using carbon dioxide marked with .sup.14 C. A control experiment in which an identical indicator treated in an equivalent environment without pollutants reveals, by comparison, the effect of the pollution.

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Ottobrunn, Germany

Heide Schnabl