A collaborative team has developed an atlas that maps gene expression patterns in the Arabidopsis root, profiling nearly 100,000 single root cells and combining the information with previously published datasets. The work was recently published in the journal Developmental Cell and provides a community resource that could help researchers track cell development and how they determine identity, as well as the roles played by neighboring cells in these processes. Learn more here on the JGI website.
One of the study’s co-authors is JGI research scientist Benjamin Cole. “This represents the largest integration of single-cell datasets in plants and provides a foundation for still larger efforts in diverse plant species beyond models,” he said. Cole annotated cell types in the plant root atlas, and noted that the approach he developed for this purpose is “particularly applicable for non-model species for which fewer ‘marker’ genes are known that are hallmarks of different cell types.” His contribution to the paper also aligns with his DOE Early Career Research Program (ECRP) award, which is also focused on single-cell and spatial transcriptomics technologies.
