Video Transcript
The diagram shows the basic outline of the process of producing plants by tissue
culture. Fill in the blank. The tissue from certain areas of the stem of a plant contains blank. When this tissue is placed onto a medium that contains nutrients and hormones, new
plants will develop. The new plants forming from these tissues will be clones of the original plant. (A) Plant embryos, (B) gametes, (C) meristematic cells, or (D) seeds.
To answer this question, let’s take a look at an outline of how plants can be
produced by tissue cultures using this diagram to help us.
As plants continuously grow throughout their lives, they have regions of growth like
the stem and root tips that contain unspecialized cells which are able to divide and
differentiate into any plant cell. These undifferentiated cells are called meristematic cells.
When cells or tissues from a meristematic region are placed onto a medium that
contains all the necessary nutrients and hormones to grow, they can start to divide
and specialize to possibly produce a whole new plant. As they contain the same genetic material as the cells from the original parent
plant, the new plants formed from these tissues will be clones of the original
plant. As it only involves one parent, no fertilization of gametes and produces genetically
identical offspring, this is a form of artificial asexual reproduction, which in
plants is called vegetative propagation.
Now we know that the correct word to fill in the blank is in answer choice (C). The tissue from certain areas of the stem of a plant contains meristematic cells that
can be used to develop into whole new plants by a tissue culture.
