Abstract
The growing tips of plants grow sterile; therefore, disease-free plants can be generated from them. How plants safeguard growing apices from pathogen infection is still a mystery. The shoot apical meristem (SAM) is one of the three stem cells niches that give rise to the above ground plant organs. This is very well explored; however, how signaling networks orchestrate immune responses against pathogen infections in the SAM remains unclear. To reconstruct a transcriptional framework of the differentially expressed genes (DEGs) pertaining to various SAM cellular populations, we acquired large-scale transcriptome datasets from the public repository Gene Expression Omnibus (GEO). We identify here distinct sets of genes for various SAM cellular populations that are enriched in immune functions, such as immune defense, pathogen infection, biotic stress, and response to salicylic acid and jasmonic acid and their biosynthetic pathways in the SAM. We further linked those immune genes to their respective proteins and identify interactions among them by mapping a transcriptome-guided SAM-interactome. Furthermore, we compared stem-cells regulated transcriptome with innate immune responses in plants showing transcriptional separation among their DEGs in Arabidopsis. Besides unleashing a repertoire of immune-related genes in the SAM, our analysis provides a SAM-interactome that will help the community in designing functional experiments to study the specific defense dynamics of the SAM-cellular populations. Moreover, our study promotes the essence of large-scale omics data re-analysis, allowing a fresh look at the SAM-cellular transcriptome repurposing data-sets for new questions.
Highlights
Unlike animals, plants are sessile and cannot defend themselves from potential danger through the mechanism of fight and flight
The Arabidopsis shoot apical meristem (SAM) cellular populations are comparatively well studied for aspects of plant growth and development
To reconstruct a transcriptional framework of the SAM cellular populations, we acquired 40 sets of gene expression profiles from Gene Expression Omnibus (GEO) pertaining to various SAM cell populations, such as CLV3p-expressing stem cells belonging to the central zone (CZ), FILP-expressing cells belonging to the organ primordia/PZ, WUS-expressing cells belonging to the RZ, AtML1-expressing cell belonging to the epidermal cell layer, and AtHGD4 cells belonging to the sub-epidermal cell layer, HMG-expressing cells of epidermal cell types; likewise, KAN- and LAS-expressing cells belong to the peripheral zone cell types
Summary
Plants are sessile and cannot defend themselves from potential danger through the mechanism of fight and flight. Being directly exposed to a biotic and abiotic environment, they perceive plethora of signals that impact their physiological wellbeing They often re-arrange their internal networks in response to external cues in order to adjust their developmental priorities. The pluripotent stem cells constantly supply precursor daughter cells to form groups of cells with identical functions (differentiated tissues) that culminates in body organs [2,3,4]. Stem cell niches, such as the shoot apical meristem (SAM), the root apical meristem (RAM), and the lateral meristem, maintain a specific signaling environment that prevent stem cells to undergo differentiation all at once yet keep a definite number of meristematic stem cells in an undifferentiated state [3,4]. The molecular mechanisms that orchestrate immunity in the SAM are largely unexplored
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Free) 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a call
