title: Gene coexpression patterns during early development of the native Arabidopsis reproductive meristem: novel candidate developmental regulators and patterns of functional redundancy.
abstract: During very early stages of flower development in Arabidopsis thaliana, a series of key decisions are taken. Indeed, the position and the basic patterning of new flowers are determined in less than 4 days. Given that the scientific literature provides hard evidence for the function of only 10% of A. thaliana genes, we hypothesized that although many essential genes have already been identified, many poorly characterized genes are likely to be involved in floral patterning. In the current study, we use high-throughput sequencing to describe the transcriptome of the native inflorescence meristem, the floral meristem and the new flower immediately after the start of organ differentiation. We provide evidence that our experimental system is reliable and less affected by experimental artefacts than a widely used floral induction system. Furthermore, we show how these data can be used to identify candidate genes for functional studies, and to generate hypotheses of functional redundancies and regulatory interactions.
authors.affiliation: Dipartimento di Bioscienze, Università degli Studi di Milano, Via Celoria 26, 20133, Milano, Italy.
authors.forename: Otho
authors.initials: O
authors.lastname: Mantegazza
authors.forename: Veronica
authors.initials: V
authors.lastname: Gregis
authors.forename: Matteo
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Chiara
authors.forename: Caterina
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Selva
authors.forename: Giulia
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Leo
authors.forename: David S
authors.initials: DS
authors.lastname: Horner
authors.forename: Martin M
authors.initials: MM
authors.lastname: Kater
mesh_terms: D017360:Arabidopsis / Q000166:cytology / Q000235:genetics* / Q000254:growth & development; D029681:Arabidopsis Proteins / Q000235:genetics* / Q000378:metabolism; D002454:Cell Differentiation; D016000:Cluster Analysis; D019295:Computational Biology; D030541:Databases, Genetic; D035264:Flowers / Q000166:cytology / Q000235:genetics / Q000254:growth & development; D018507:Gene Expression Regulation, Developmental; D018506:Gene Expression Regulation, Plant; D059014:High-Throughput Nucleotide Sequencing; D017403:In Situ Hybridization; D056626:Inflorescence / Q000166:cytology / Q000235:genetics / Q000254:growth & development; D018519:Meristem / Q000166:cytology / Q000235:genetics / Q000254:growth & development; D042282:Microdissection; D018749:RNA, Plant / Q000737:chemistry / Q000235:genetics; D017423:Sequence Analysis, RNA; D059467:Transcriptome
chemical_list: D029681:Arabidopsis Proteins; D018749:RNA, Plant
keywords: Arabidopsis thaliana; RNA sequencing; floral meristem; inflorescence meristem; laser microdissection; organ differentiation