Documente Academic
Documente Profesional
Documente Cultură
These solutes are generally produced at photosynthetic sites ( source) and are
moved to either growing or storage sites depending on the time of the year
( sink).
As growth or storage sites may exist anywhere in the plant simultaneously, flow
must be able to be bi-directional within a phloem element.
The first evidence that phloem carried these solutes occurred back in the 1600's
through the studies of Marcello Malphigi. When a ring of bark of striped off of a
tree the tissue above became swollen, he correctly interpreted this to mean that
the solute solution coming from the leaves above was trapped by the break in the
bark. This phenomenon of stripping is called girdling and is used to kill trees.
Unintentionally it also occurs when animals such as deer desperate for food in
the winter eat bark and then kill off the trees.
Physiologists in this century used aphids to gain more insights on phloem flow.
Aphids insert their proboscis into phloem when feeding. Turgor pressure forces
sap through their digestive tract and out their rear ends, exuding as droplets of
"honey dew". A number of ants utilize these 'pipe line' effect feeding off of the
exudate of the ants.
Physiologists learned how to anestatize and chop off the insect using a mini
guillotine leaving the head/proboscis to tap the flow for hours. Fro this they
learned:
10-25% of the exudate were solutes - 90% which was sucrose and the remainder
sugar alcohols ( sorbitol, mannitol) as well as hormones, viruses, alkaloids etc.--
less than 1% amino acids and N-compounds.
More recent studies included the use of radioisotope tracers. Labeled C14O2 gas is
given to the plants. Once incorporated into sugars, the flow of these same sugars
can be followed through the plant from mesophyll to sink sites, and through the
sieve tubes themselves.
Many different models have been proposed for the movement of sugars
through the plant
Munich's model best describes the movement in the phloem. His model suggests
that there is a turgor-pressure gradient that drives the directional mass flow of the
solutes and water through sieve tubes of the phloem.
Loading: Loading of sieve tubes from the cell walls requires energy which is
derived indirectly by the proton gradient.
1. ATP and H+-carrier in the cell membrane are used to pump protons out of the
sieve tube.
3. Diffusion of proton back into the sieve tube, through ATP-ase, is coupled to a
carrier and powers the transport of sugar into the sieve tube.