Clinostat


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Clinostat

 

an apparatus used in plant physiology experiments to eliminate the one-sided influence of certain environmental factors, primarily gravity and light; first employed by the German botanist J. Sachs (in the 1880’s).

A plant attached to the revolving axis of the apparatus will continue to grow in its original direction, because the slow revolution of the axis while not eliminating the action of gravity, does prevent it from acting one-sidedly. A clinostat can be used, for example, to eliminate the phototropic deflections caused by onesided light or to study the time it takes for a plant to react to various stimuli.

References in periodicals archive ?
But this view is increasingly being discredited, since on clinostats there may be vibrational stress and thus an increase in stirring and convection at the cellular level rather than a lowering or elimination, as would, in theory, occur in weightlessness (Silver, 1976; Albrecht-Buehler, 1991, 1992; Kessler, 1992).
Clinostats and centrifuges: Their use, value, and limitations in gravitational biological research.
Strategies for 'minimal growth maintenance' of cell cultures: a perspective on management for extended duration experimentation in the microgravity environment of a space station
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