Journal
PROCEEDINGS OF THE NATIONAL ACADEMY OF SCIENCES OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
Volume 117, Issue 52, Pages 33689-33699Publisher
NATL ACAD SCIENCES
DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2018788117
Keywords
shoot apical meristem; maize; single-cell transcriptomics; cell differentiation
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Funding
- NSF [IOS-2016021, IOS-1238142]
- NSF Postdoctoral Research Fellowship in Biology [IOS-1710973]
- Schmittau-Novak small grant
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Plants maintain populations of pluripotent stem cells in shoot apical meristems (SAMs), which continuously produce new above-ground organs. We used single-cell RNA sequencing (scRNA-seq) to achieve an unbiased characterization of the transcriptional landscape of the maize shoot stem-cell niche and its differentiating cellular descendants. Stem cells housed in the SAM tip are engaged in genome integrity maintenance and exhibit a low rate of cell division, consistent with their contributions to germline and somatic cell fates. Surprisingly, we find no evidence for a canonical stem-cell organizing center subtending these cells. In addition, trajectory inference was used to trace the gene expression changes that accompany cell differentiation, revealing that ectopic expression of KNOTTED1 (KN1) accelerates cell differentiation and promotes development of the sheathing maize leaf base. These single-cell transcriptomic analyses of the shoot apex yield insight into the processes of stem-cell function and cell-fate acquisition in the maize seedling and provide a valuable scaffold on which to better dissect the genetic control of plant shoot morphogenesis at the cellular level.
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