The effect of taxol and ethyl-N-phenylcarbamate (EPC) on growth and gravitropism in Zea mays L.

The effect of taxol and ethyl-N-phenylcarbamate (EPC) on the growth and gravitropism of maize roots and coleoptiles was studied. Taxol is known to promote the assembly of microtubules (MTs) and stabilizes MTs by preventing depolymerization. EPC, on the contrary, is an anti-microtubule drug that promotes disassembly of MTs. Taxol, at 1 micromole, inhibited gravitropic response of maize roots to about 40%, but did not inhibit growth; at 10 micromoles, it inhibited the gravitropic response of coleoptile segments of maize by approximately 50%, but did not inhibit growth, while 0.5 mM EPC inhibited both the gravitropic response and growth of maize roots by approximately 50%. Taxol, which inhibited the gravitropic response of maize roots and coleoptile segments, had no effect on either the polar or the bilateral transport of auxin. These results indicated that MT polymerization could not occur normally with taxol or EPC, so that if there was any abnormal rearrangement of MT, the gravitropic response was inhibited, which resulted from the inhibition of neither growth nor auxin transport. These results suggested that gravitropic response was related to the MT arrangement, and that both straight growth and the differential growth in gravitropic response could be regulated by different mechanisms.