Protoplasts: a useful research system for plant cell biology, especially dedifferentiation

As protoplasts have the characteristics of no cell walls, rapid population growth, and synchronicity, they are useful tools for research in many fields, especially cellular biology (Table 1). This article is an overview that focuses on the application of protoplasts to investigate the mechanisms of dedifferentiation, including changes in hormone signals, epigenetic changes, and organelle distribution during the dedifferentiation process. The article also emphasizes the wide range of uses for protoplasts in studying protein positions and signaling during different stresses. The examples provided help to show that protoplast systems, for example the mesophyll protoplast system of Arabidopsis, represent promising tools for studying developmental biology. Meanwhile, specific analysis of protoplast, which comes from different tissue, has specific advantages and limitations (Table 2), and it can provide recommendations to use this system.