Protoplasts are cells that have mostly lost their tissue context
Until now, most of our patterns have been from multicellular plant tissues where the interesting shapes come from the structure of the plant cell wall. For this pattern we are breaking down the walls!
The video below shows isolated plant cells in liquid culture. Plant cells can be turned into so called protoplasts, which are plant cells that have their cell wall removed by chemical, enzymatic or mechanical means. Removing the walls causes the multicellular tissue to break down into single cells, and the loss of the cell wall also changes the shape of the cell itself. In this video plant cell cultures are growing in liquid culture on shakers. The shaking helps to make sure the liquid culture is sufficiently aerated so that the cells can grow and thrive in culture.
A single protoplast under the microscope
In this microscopic image, the left panel shows a protoplast transformed with a fluorescent protein. You can see the protein only in certain parts of the cell. On the right panel, you can see what the protoplast looks like when viewed under white light under the microscope.⠀
The bubbly protoplast pattern
Not just the plant material but also the resulting pattern is quite different from other designs you may have discovered on our page. The single-celled protoplasts create a pattern that is light and airy, and not a dense or symmetrical pattern. Building off the light and airy feel of this pattern, we picked two soothing color tones, teal and purple, and have also made the pattern with the colours inverted. For the holidays we played again with this pattern, this time bringing in nuances of gold and grey to symbolize a bubbly champagne feeling. Perfect for New Year’s Eve.
You can find this pattern as table runners and matching baskets as part of our Christmas collection 2020. It’s also up for ordering through our print-on-demand shops at Spoonflower and Society6.
