Transcriptional Profiling of Arabidopsis Root Hairs and Pollen Defines an Apical Growth Signature

Despite their different origin and function, both pollen tubes and root hairs share the same sort of apical growth mechanism, i.e., the spatially focused cell expansion at the very apex. Ion fluxes, membrane trafficking, the actin cytoskeleton and their interconnection via signaling networks have been identified as fundamental processes underlying this kind of growth. Several molecules involved in apical growth have been identified, but the genetic basis is far from being fully characterized. We have used Affymetrix Arabidopsis ATH1 GeneChips to obtain the expression profiles of isolated Arabidopsis root hairs. A comparison with the expression profile of flow-sorted pollen grains reveals an overlap in the expression of 4989 genes, which corresponds to 42% of the root hair transcriptome and 76% of the pollen transcriptome, respectively. Our comparison with transcriptional profiles of vegetative tissues by principal component analysis and hierarchical clustering shows a clear separation of these samples comprised of cell types with diffuse growth from the two cell types with apical growth. 277 genes are enriched and 49 selectively expressed, respectively, in root hairs and pollen. From this set of genes emerges an apical growth signature containing novel candidate genes for apical growth determination.

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Becker JD, Takeda S, Borges F, Dolan L, Feijó JA