Poster abstracts

Poster number 4 submitted by Jingyi Cao

Cell-type Specific Alternative Polyadenylation in Arabidopsis Roots

Jingyi Cao (Botany Department, Miami University)

Abstract:
Alternative PolyAdenylation (APA) is defined as the use of more than one polyadenylation site in a gene thus producing different transcripts with potentially different coding sequences and/or regulatory cis-elements. Dynamic APA has been discovered in different tissues, developmental stages and environmental responses in regulating gene expression across animals and plants under certain conditions, such as cell programming, cancer cell development in mammalian cells and Arabidopsis flowering time control. However, the influences of APA during cell differentiation and organogenesis in plants are not understood.

Due to its simple organization, Arabidopsis root becomes a tractable system to study plant organogenesis and cell differentiation since the cell types of the root tip can be clearly defined layers. The available collection of GFP-labeled specific cell types in Arabidopsis root makes it possible to isolate each cell type by fluorescence activated cell sorting (FACS). APA profiles of the transcriptomes of differential cell types will be revealed by using a large-scale deep sequencing protocol we developed that specifically targeting the junctions of the 3’-UTR and poly(A) tails. By applying this FACS approach plus the sequencing platform, we are testing a hypothesis that APA contributes to the change in gene expression and thus plays a role in cell differentiation of Arabidopsis root. Some preliminary results of this work will be presented.

Keywords: alternative polyadenylation, fluorescence-activated cell sorting, Arabidopsis root development