ABSTRACT
This chapter illustrates the usefulness of plant protoplasts for studying cell organelles. It focuses on research with cytoskeletal elements and coated vesicles to illustrate the usefulness of plant protoplasts for such studies. Plant protoplasts also provide an excellent system to probe the plant plasma membrane which normally is inaccessible due to the presence of a cell wall. Tobacco protoplasts injected with the dye Lucifer Yellow survived the mechanical injury and completed cell division. Protoplasts are apparently also amenable to microinjection experiments after they have regenerated thin cell walls. Plant protoplasts provide an exceptionally good experimental system to study coated vesicles. Protoplasts freshly isolated from suspension cultured cells contain an abundance of coated vesicles and coated pits. Protoplasts derived from rapidly growing cultured plant cells contain numerous coated vesicles and thus are particularly well suited to studies of this interesting cell organelle.
