Stochastic gene expression drives mesophyll protoplast regeneration.

Sci Adv

State Key Laboratory of Plant Genomics and National Center for Plant Gene Research (Beijing), Institute of Genetics and Developmental Biology, The Innovative Academy of Seed Design, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100101, China.

Published: August 2021

Cell pluripotency is fundamental to biology. It has long been known that differentiated somatic plant cells may reacquire pluripotency, but the underlying mechanism remains elusive. In many plant species, a single isolated mesophyll protoplast may regenerate into an entire plant, which is widely used in gene transformation. Here, we identified two transcription factors whose ectopic activation promotes protoplast regeneration. Furthermore, we found that their expression was induced by protoplast isolation but at a very low frequency. Using live imaging and single-cell transcriptomics, we show that isolating protoplasts induces enhanced expression variation at the genome level. Isolating protoplasts also leads to genome-wide increases in chromatin accessibility, which promotes stochastic activation of gene expression and enhances protoplast regeneration. We propose that transcriptome chaos with increased expression variability among cells creates a cellular-level evolutionary driver selecting for regenerating cells.

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Source
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8357238PMC
http://dx.doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.abg8466DOI Listing

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