Figure 19.3 Cloning a Plant

Original Paper: Steward, F. C., M. O. Mapes and K. Mears. 1958. Growth and organized development of cultured cells. II. Organization in cultures grown from freely suspended cells. American Journal of Botany 45: 705–708.

When cells were removed from a plant and put into a medium with nutrients and hormones, they lost many of their specialized features—in other words, they dedifferentiated. Did these cells retain the ability to differentiate again? Frederick Steward found that a cultured carrot cell did indeed retain the ability to develop into an embryo and a new plant.