Radiation-Induced Processes in Moss Cells: Short-Term and Long-Term Radiation Responses of Special Interest after Microbeam UV Irradiation of the Haploid Moss Cells of Funaria hygrometrica

Abstract

The response of a cell population to perturbation is a delicate one with a series of internal controls operating simultaneously. While this response is obvious for radiation, it also tends to operate in response to most potentially lethal influences in general (von Döhren, 19 74). It would be desirable to have a complete model, which would help to interpret many complex cellular events. Perhaps the most interesting problem is the investigation of cellular components during the growth cycle. However, quantitative formulation of these components is limited by many prohibitive factors. Consequently the complexity of all established models is restricted by experimental data as well as by limitations in the generalization of data obtained from bacteria compared to those from yeast or other more developed eukaryotic systems, which in contrast are very complex. Furthermore, there are only a few accurate studies in the literature in which the growth kinetics of individual functional entities are analyzed in detail. Thus, it would be useful to have available another eukaryotic system that could be easily handled and that would survive under laboratory conditions.. Such a system is demonstrated in these experiments with the protonema of Funaria hygrometrica.