Plant Single Cell Sampling

Plant single cell sampling and analysis allows the determination of solute concentrations in individual cells and tissues. This is particularly important when studying mineral nutrition, where the cell- and tissue-specific distribution of individual mineral nutrients increases a plant’s options to store and mobilize these nutrients in response to a changing external availability. In this chapter, some selected single cell sampling and analysis methods are described in detail, and their advantages and possible pitfalls discussed. These methods include pressure-driven extraction of cell contents (cell sap sampling), and the analysis of extracted cell sap through picoliter osmometry (osmolality), energy-dispersive X-ray (EDX) analysis (concentrations of Na, K, P, S, Cl, Ca), and microfluorometry (concentrations of anions and amino acids). In most cases, the extracted cell sap is mainly vacuolar in origin.