Description
The development of trichomes (leaf hairs) from pluripotent epidermal cells in Arabidopsis provides a powerful system to investigate the regulatory motifs involved in plant cell differentiation. Genetic studies have revealed that a bHLH transcription factor, GL3, activates downstream genes required for trichome initiation by interacting with a R2R3-MYB protein, GL1. We have taken advantage of several mutants in the trichome developmental pathway and gene expression analyses to identify a set of genes expressed predominantly in Arabidopsis trichomes.