IDENTIFICATION OF CELL CYCLE REGULATORS INPLANTS

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

Córdoba

Congreso; 52th Annual Meeting Argentine Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology; 2016

Argentine Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology

Plant organ growth occurs through an initial stage of cell proliferation followed by another of cell expansion and differentiation. Therefore, the control of the cell cycle (CC) is critical to determine the magnitude of plant growth. CC regulators often have oscillating activities regulated by transcriptional and posttranscriptional mechanisms. For example, E2F or MYB3R transcription factors control the expression peaks of several genes during the G1/S or G2/M phases, respectively. Genomic studies indicated that only a subset of the genes expressed in the G1/S or G2/M phases are regulated by these already described pathways, suggesting that other transcriptional regulators remain to be identified. The objective of this work is to identify genes that control the CC using Arabidopsis thaliana roots as model system. To this end, we analyzed the transcriptome of cells in the G2/M transition. These cells were obtained by cell sorting of 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 60 have previously been described as CC regulators. Analysis of the remaining genes enabled us to identify new potential regulators of the CC. The initial characterization of some of these candidates, with special emphasis on the transcription factors identified, will be discussed.