Research summary
Unlike animals, plants continuously grow and develop organs throughout their life. This remarkable ability is achieved by maintaining a stable pool of stem cells, which are embedded in the meristem. In higher plants, shoot apical meristem (SAM) harbors pluripotent stem cells in the center. Early in development SAM stem cell progenitors will differentiate in to organ primordia at the periphery of meristem, which will form leaves. However, later on meristem integrates environmental cues in to development thus organ primordia will emerge as flower meristem that will produce flower organs. Similar to animals, differentiation of stem cells in to distinct cell types is essential to form the body parts of a plant. Currently, we are studying the gene regulatory network underlying the cell type specification in plant model organism Arabidopsis thaliana. We have identified several transcription factors (TFs) enriched in SAM cell types using fluorescent activated cell sorting followed with microarray analysis. We are taking a systems biology approach to understand the role of cell specific TFs in cell identity acquisition. Our lab has embarked upon to determine the expression pattern of epidermal and subepidermal cell type enriched TFs and their interaction with their cognate partners and immediate targets. We are using a variety of techniques such as molecular biology, genetics, genomics and live-imaging to resolve the gene regulatory networks involved in cell type specification in SAM.
Selected Publications
- Yadav, R.K.#, Perales, M.#, Gruel, G.#, Ohno, C., Heisler, M., Grike, T., Jönsson, H., and Reddy, G.V. (2013) Plant stem cell maintenance involves direct transcriptional repression of differentiation program. Molecular Systems Biology 9, 654. (# Co-first author)
- Yadav, R.K.#, Perales M.#, Girke, T., & Reddy, G.V., (2011) WUSCHEL protein movement mediates stem cell homeostasis. Genes & Development 25, 2025-2030. (# Co-first author)
- Liu, M., Chakraborty, A., Yadav, R. K., Meenakshisundaram, G., Reddy, G. V. & Roy-Chowdhury, A. (2011). Adaptive cell segmentation and tracking for volumetric confocal microscopy images of a developing plant meristem. Molecular Plant 4, 922-931.
- Prasad, K., Grigg, S.P., Barkoulas, M., Yadav, R.K., Sanchez-Perez, G.F., Pinon, V., Blilou, I., Hofhuis, H., Dhonukshe. P., Galinha, C., Mähönen, A.P., Muller, W.H., Raman, S., Verkleij. A.J., Snel, B., Reddy, G.V., Tsiantis, M., Scheres, B. (2011). Arabidopsis PLETHORA transcription factors control phyllotaxis. Current Biology 21, 1123- 1128.
- Yadav, R.K. Tavakkoli, M. & Reddy, G.V. (2010). WUSCHEL mediates stem-cell homeostasis by regulating stem-cell number and patterns of cell division and differentiation of stem-cell progenitors. Development 137, 3581-3589.
- Liu, M., Yadav, R. K., Roy-Chowdhury, A. & Reddy, G. V. (2010). Automated tracking of stem cell lineages of Arabidopsis shoot apex using local graph matching. Plant Journal 62, 135-147.
- Oben Tataw, Min Liu, Ram. K. Yadav, Venugopala Reddy & Amit Roy-Chowdhurry (2010). Pattern analysis of stem cell growth dynamics in the shoot apex of Arabidopsis. Intl. Conf. on Image Processing.
- Yadav, R.K., Girke, T., Pasala, S., Xie, M. & Reddy, G.V. (2009). Gene expression map of the Arabidopsis shoot apical meristem stem cell niche. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A 106, 4941-4946.
- Fulton, L., Batoux, M., Vaddepalli, P., Yadav, R.K., Busch, W., Andersen, S.U., Jeong, S., Lohmann, J.U. & Schneitz,K. (2009). DETORQUEO, QUIRKY, and ZERZAUST represent novel components involved in organ development mediated by the receptor-like kinase STRUBBELIG in Arabidopsis thaliana. PLoS Genet 5, e1000355.
- Yadav, R.K., Fulton, L., Batoux, M. & Schneitz, K. (2008). The Arabidopsis receptor-like kinase STRUBBELIG mediates inter-cell-layer signaling during floral development. Dev Biol 323, 261-270.
Book Chapters
- Yadav, R.K., Snipes, S., Girke, T. & Reddy, G.V. (2013). Organization of gene expression and its regulation in shoot apical meristem. Methods in Molecular Biology 959, 235-245.
- Chakraborty, A., Yadav, R.K., Liu, M., Tataw, M., Mkrtchyan, K., Amit Roy Chowdhury and Reddy, G.V. (2012) Computational tools for quantitative analysis of cell growth patterns and morphogenesis in actively developing plant stem cell niches. Methods in Molecular Biology. 876: 217-227.
- Fulton, L., Batoux, M., Yadav, R.K. and Schneitz, K. (2006) The genetic control of flower size and shape. Annual Plant Reviews 20, 71-97.