ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on some aspects regarding the selection and characterization of the products of protoplast fusion as well as on some of the genetic consequences and uses of somatic hybridization. Somatic cell fusion leading to the formation of viable cell hybrids has been a tremendously powerful technique in vertebrate cell biology and, particularly, human genetics and immunology. Cell hybridization might be exploited for the mapping of genes and linkage analysis in somatic plant cells as it has been so successfully using human-rodent cell hybrids. Somatic incompatibility resulting from the enforced union of alien nuclear, chloroplastic, and mitochondrial genetic elements is open to experimental investigation. Protoplasts from different sources can differ with respect to the cell cycle phase of their nuclei, Leaf cells usually are all in G1 phase whereas protoplasts isolated from suspension cultured cells are in different phases of their cell cycle.
