15N is a nonradioactive heavy isotope of nitrogen, widely used for biochemical and physiological research in plants. For instance, 15N-KNO3 was used as the nitrogen source in plants in order to investigate nitrate uptake activity and transport from roots to shoots (Lin et al., 2008). Here, we describe a detailed pipeline used for labeling living rice (Oryza sativa) plants with 15N-KNO3 and determination of net nitrate uptake and transport activity, and this protocol was proved to be valid in Arabidopsis and rice (Lin et al., 2008; Hu et al., 2015).
Isotope ratio mass spectrometer(Thermo Fisher Scientific, model: Finnigan Delta Plus XP) with elemental analyzer (Thermo Fisher Scientific, model: Flash EA 1112 )
Liu, Y., Hu, B. and Chu, C. (2016). 15N-nitrate Uptake Activity and Root-to-shoot Transport Assay in Rice. Bio-protocol 6(16): e1897. DOI: 10.21769/BioProtoc.1897.