A Bright Future for the Bright Yellow-2 Cell Culture

The capacity of plant cells to revive out of a latent stage of differentiation and to start dividing in the presence of appropriate hormone concentrations has facilitated the in vitro culturing of a panoply of plant species from different tissue sources. Cell biology studies have been performed on many different cultures, but their divergent nature has complicated the integration of research information that had been collected separately. In retrospect, it has become evident that the use of Arabidopsis as a model system has created important benefits in terms of development and accessibility of novel tools and methods. With these advantages in mind, we should be encouraged also to focus on a single model system for the molecular analysis of cellular growth, including cytoskeletal organization and cell cycle control. Arabidopsis cell cultures have been generated, but they have fallen short in cell cycle studies because attempts to synchronize these cultures with high efficiency have been unsuccessful. Moreover, because cells are very small, detailed observation of their intracellular organization and content is limited. In contrast, the tobacco (Nicotiana tabacum) BY-2 cell culture can be highly synchronized and stands out in terms of growth rate and homogeneity (Nagata et al., 1992; Samuels et al., 1998; Nagata and Kumagai, 1999).