Seminar Dr. Bruno Guillotin

One promise of single-cell RNA-seq is to provide new perspectives to the comparative approach by enabling a direct, rapid, and easy comparison of different cell types within one organ, but also between homologous organs across species at high resolution. We first used this technique to infer how plant cells can change identity during root regeneration, a phenomenon characterized by the reformation of a stem cell niche upon wounding, by the surrounding differentiated tissue. After identifying and following the cells involved in regeneration, we were able to pinpoint the cell type and transcriptional cascade necessary for cell fate transition, including the potential role of multiple chromatin remodeling genes, bringing new perspectives for plant propagation.
We then investigated if we could follow cell types across different plant species as key adaptive traits can be mediated by specialized cell types within organs. Here, we integrated the cells within roots in three grasses - Zea mays (maize), Sorghum bicolor (sorghum), and outgroup Setaria viridis (Setaria). Our comparative cellular analysis shows that the transcriptomes of some cell types diverged more rapidly than others, in part by recruiting gene modules from other cell types. In addition, this approach allowed us to improve our understanding on how duplicated genes are conserved throughout evolution and across species, by subfunctionalization and neofunctionalization, potentially mediated by intronic cis-regulatory elements.

Bruno Guillotin, Kenneth Birnbaum Team, Center for Genomics and Systems Biology, New York University, USA

Invited by Pierre Hilson, "Cell Biology and Plant Regeneration " BCR team

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Registration deadline : 07/10/23