Summary
Measurement of the B-interphase has afforded a means of calculating the duration of the cell division cycle at various temperatures, from 0° to 40° C, in the root meristems of Allium cepa. For this purpose caffeine labelling was used to produce a small population (1–5%) of highly synchronized binucleate cells. The B-interphase is what we call the period from 0 hour (end of the one-hour caffeine treatment) to the appearance of the first binucleate cells in bi-prophase. The duration of the phases that make up the cycle was calculated from their relative frequency within the meristematic population.
Observation shows that at 0° and at 40° the cells do not go through the cycle at all and that from 10° to 30° the speed increases in almost linear proportion. There is no significant change in the relative duration of any of the morphological phases under any of the conditions tested.
In discussing these results the authors propose the use of the cell flow (percentage of meristematic cells passing through any point in the cycle in one hour) as an expression in the simplest form of the steady-state kinetics of the meristematic population at a given temperature.
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López-Sáez, J.F., Giménez-Martin, G. & Gonzalez-Fernández, A. Duration of the cell division cycle and its dependence on temperature. Zeitschrift für Zellforschung 75, 591–600 (1966). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00341516
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00341516