Laser-Assisted Microdissection and High-Throughput RNA Sequencing of the Arabidopsis Gynoecium Medial and Lateral Domains

For obtaining insights into gene networks during plant reproductive development, having transcriptomes of specific cells from developmental stages as starting points is very useful. During development, there is a balance between cell proliferation and differentiation, and many cell and tissue types are formed. While there is a wealth of transcriptome data available, it is mostly at the organ level and not at specific cell or tissue type level. Therefore, methods to isolate specific cell and tissue types are needed. One method is fluorescent activated cell sorting (FACS), but it has limitations such as requiring marker lines and protoplasting. Recently, single-cell/nuclei isolation methods have been developed; however, a minimum amount of genetic information (marker genes) is needed to annotate/predict the resulting cell clusters in these experiments. Another technique that has been known for some time is laser-assisted microdissection (LAM), where specific cells are microdissected and collected using a laser mounted on a microscope platform. This technique has advantages over the others because no fluorescent marker lines must be made, no marker genes must be known, and no protoplasting must be done. The LAM technique consists in tissue fixation, tissue embedding and sectioning using a microtome, microdissection and collection of the cells of interest on the microscope, and finally RNA extraction, library preparation, and RNA sequencing. In this protocol, we implement the use of normal slides instead of the membrane slides commonly used for LAM. We applied this protocol to obtain the transcriptomes of specific tissues during the development of the gynoecium of Arabidopsis.

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