Title: February 20, 2005
 1February 20, 2005
Sharp  what and why Davis  mapping 
genes Clark - maize rootworm Bohnert - 
get genes/transcripts Tao  dynamics of 
genes Springer  making sense of all 
Plant Genome  Gene Complexity, Gene 
Regulation, Place  Timing, and how to sort 
the Players
Valeriy Poroyko, Mark Fredricksen (Pinghua Li, 
Qingqiu Gong Linus Gog, Melanie Griffith)
NSF DBI 0211842 
 2The Plant Genome 
Diploid Polyploid
Chrysanthemum species illustrate the phenomenon.
Monoploid number (the basic set)  9 
chromosomes In Chrysanthemum species, the number 
of chromosomes fall into 5 categories 18 
chromosomes  diploid (2 copies of the 
monoploid) 36 chromosomes  tetrapoid (4 copies 
of the monoploid) 54 chromosomes  hexapoid (6 
copies of the monoploid) 72 chromosomes  
octaploid (8 copies of the monploid) 90 
chromosomes  decaploid (10 copies of the 
monoploid)
50 of all flowering plants are polyploid.
See Arabidopsis 
 3AQP are distributed over all Chromosomes - a few 
clusters, many duplications
Figure 3 
 4Arabidopsis  model plant small, fast, 
prolific, mutants, lines, ecotypes, genome 
sequence
Field on a dish! 
 5(No Transcript) 
 6Arabidopsis growing in the field in high CO2 
and/or ozone
FACE-rings
down there
concept plant performance in the future earth 
 atmosphere (2040) - also soy, corn, weeds 
 7The Plant Genome 
Plants in silico? Sure! And then Plant 
Design from Scratch 
 8Controls for Gene Expression  many 
Switchboards
The Plant Genome 
-  Chromatin condensation state 
-  
-  Local chromatin environment 
-  Transcription initiation 
-  Transcript elongation 
-  mRNA splicing 
-  mRNA export 
-  mRNA place in the cell 
-  RNA half-life 
-  Killer microRNAs 
-  Ribosome loading 
Levels of regulation that affect what we 
call gene expression 
 9binding site for Pol-II sometimes recognizable
promoter
REs
ABRE DREB ERE response elements for every 
 condition number spacing
3  variable, condition-dependent
5
splicing  alternative splicing
Watch out  not only activators may bind, but 
repressors as well! - think about you may need 
an activator to make a protein that removes a 
repressor. 
 10The Plant Transcriptome 
5 years ago, we did not know that such a 
control system existed!
Killer RNAs (there are micro-genes) 
microRNAs 
 11The Plant Transcriptome 
How to sample the transcriptome?
Morphological dissection remember Bob 
Sharps talk! (root, leaf, flower - 
epidermis, guard cell, etc.) Cell sorting 
make single cells, send through cell sorter 
(size, color, reporter gene) Laser ablation 
 micromanipulation of laser to cut 
individual cells Biochemical dissection 
chloroplasts, mitochondria, ribosomes, 
other membranes
Painting cells with a reporter gene - here this 
is GFP Green Fluorescence Protein 
 12The Plant Transcriptome 
Painting tissues then isolating desired cells
Enzymatic staining
The Endodermis of the root tip is highlighted in 
transgenic plants using pSCRmGFP5.  
 13Cell-Specific GFP Expression
- Catalog of available transgenic Arabidopsis 
 lines.
- Lines are available from the stock centers. 
- However, the molecular basis for the observed 
 phenotype is usually uncharacterized.
14The Plant Transcriptome 
cDNA  complementary DNA converts messenger RNA 
into double-stranded DNA
- gt cDNA libraries 
-  neat 
-  
-  normalized 
-  subtracted 
- gt SAGE libraries 
Normalization removes mRNAs for which there 
are many copies in a cell  thus enriching for 
 rare mRNAs (not so much sequencing to do)
Subtraction removes cDNAs which you already know 
 (less sequencing) 
 15cDNA Libraries 
The Plant Transcriptome 
Cloning of root RNAs from segments S1  S4 root 
tip (Sharp lab) sequenced 18,000 
clones found 8,000 unique and 130 novel 
genes How many genes make a root? 
 16The Plant Transcriptome 
SAGE  Serial Analysis of Gene Expression  an 
Overview
Isolate small regions (SAGE tags) of each mRNA 
transcript in a cell
Isolate total RNA from cells or tissue
Digest tags and ligate into concatamers for 
sequencing
Reference sequencing results against public 
databases 
 17FR697, 48 h after transplanting (from cell length 
profiles)
WW00 WS05 WS48
 WW
4 segments each barcoded then normalized sequence 
6,000 from 17,000 seqs 8,000 different 
mRNAs 800 never found before in any organism
 WS 
 18SAGE tags and EST contigs recognized in three 
corn root libraries.
Problem - how to understand what the 
meaning of 8,000 genes might be!
Figure 7 
 19Translation  ribosomes
Chromatin-associated functions
Cell cycle control  maintenance 
 20Nucleotide transport  metabolism
Secondary metabolite dynamics
Ion transport 
 21Importing data into Pathways  biochemical, 
developmental, regulatory
MapMan 
 22The Plant Transcriptome 
Quantitative PCR in 384-well plates (96 primer 
pairs, 3 repeats each)
Taking SAGE  cDNA sequences together - corn 
roots express 20-23,000 genes (i.e., mRNA is 
made) - The entire corn genome is expected to 
include 50,000 genes 
 23Why are we doing this?
-  Genes expressed in well-watered conditions, 
-  how many, where and which? 
-  
-  Changes during drought episodes? 
-  
-  Variation in different lines or land races? 
-  
-  Breeders to cross and select for tolerance! 
-  
-  Proteins and substances (metabolites) made? 
-  (how to make a cell wall, how to defend against 
 rootworms)
-  
-  Make corn with thicker (modified) cell walls!
24Transcript Dynamics  Wenjing Tao is next
mRNA 2
mRNA 1
DNA
Reverse Transcription labelling using Cy5 and Cy3 
dyes
Array onto glass slides using Robotic Gridder 
Block reactive groups Fix  denature DNA
cDNA 2-cy5
cDNA 1-cy3
Measuring the ratio of expression (control to 
test Population)
Hybridize 
 25Thimm O, Blasing O, Gibon Y, Nagel A, Meyer S, 
Kruger P, Selbig J, Muller LA, Rhee SY, Stitt M. 
 (2004) MAPMAN a user-driven tool to display 
genomics data sets onto diagrams of metabolic 
 pathways and other biological processes. Plant 
J. 37(6)914-39.
http//gabi.rzpd.de/projects/MapMan/
The program can be downloaded from this site. As 
soon as I can, I will put together some real 
data (published data) that you could insert into 
the program and then manipulate.