Assessment of glycinebetaine and proline compartmentation by analysis of isolated beet vacuoles.

Vacuoles isolated from storage root tissue of red beet (Beta vulgaris L.) do not leak significant quantities of betanin, sucrose, Na(+) or K(+) during isolation. This indicates that analysis of vacuoles in vitro gives meanigful information about the compartmentation of solutes in vivo. Preparations of vacouoles were used to determine the distribution of glycinebetaine and proline between vacuole and cytoplasm in beet cells. Both compounds were detected in preparations of isolated beet vacuoles. In the case of glycinebetaine it was shown that this solute was associated with the vacuoles, not with the small number of other organelles which contaminated the preparations. The vacuolar pool accounted for 26 to 84% of the total tissue glycinebetaine and 17 to 57% of the proline. Concentrations of these compounds in vacuole and cytoplasm were calculated and were always higher in the cytoplasm than in the vacuole. The concentration gradient across the tonoplast varied considerably. The significance of these results is discussed in relation to the hypothesis that glycinebetaine and proline function as benign cytoplasmic osmotica.