Identification of genes regulating root growth in plants.

VENA, RODRIGO; ERCOLI, MA FLORENCIA; RODRIGUEZ, RAMIRO ESTEBAN; GOLDY, CAMILA; PALATNIK, JAVIER F

Buenos Aires

Simposio; Simposio Fronteras en Biociencia 2; 2016

IBIOBA - Max Planck

Plant organ growth occurs through an initial stage of cell proliferation followed by another of expansion and differentiation. The control of the cell cycle (CC) is central for generating organs with defined sizes and morphologies. CC regulators have an oscillating activity established by transcriptional and posttranscriptional mechanisms of regulation. Several periodic transcriptional regulators have been identified and characterized. Among them E2F and MYB3Rs have been described as main regulators of the G1/S and G2/M transition respectively. Genomic studies indicated that only a subset of the genes with expression peaks at the G1/S or G2/M phases are directly regulated by these regulators, suggesting that other transcriptional regulators remain to be identified. The objective of this work is to identify and characterize genes that control the CC using Arabidopsis thaliana roots as a model system.To identify genes that regulate the G2/M transition, we analyzed the transcriptome of cells in this phase obtained by Fluorescence Activated Cell Sorting from protoplasts prepared from roots expressing a GFP reporter of a mitotic cyclin. Analysis of these data yielded ca. 400 genes with expression enriched in G2/M cells, of which only about 60 genes have been previously described to be involved in the CC. Analysis of the remaining genes enabled us to identify new potential regulators the CC and the initial characterization of some of these candidates will be discussed.