Expression data of procambium/cambium in Arabidopsis root

Vascular cambium is a secondary meristem which produces xylem (wood) inwards and phloem (bark) outwards. The activity of cambium leads to expansion in the diameters in plants, that is, secondary growth, and thus contributes to biomass increase. The regulation of cambium development is at multilevel including phytohormones and peptide-receptor kinase (CLE41/44-PXY) signalling pathways. However, only limited progress has been made on the transcriptional regulation level. To construct the transcriptional network that regulates cambium development, we performed a genome wide transcript profiling in sorted procambial and cambial cells in Arabidopsis roots. More than 500 genes were identified as cambium abundant genes via comparison against transcriptomes of other Arabidopsis root cell types. We then investigated the roles of almost all the cambial transcription factors (TFs) and some of their homologous genes during secondary growth. Many of the candidate TFs were highly expressed in cambium based on the promoter GUS fusion and in situ hybridization. An unbiased transcriptional regulatory network was constructed using transcript profiling data collected from inducible overexpression lines for selected candidate TFs and a few major nodes were identified in the network including WOX4 and KNAT1. Moreover, the severity of mutant phenotypes was predicted based on the network. Next, we used the predication as a guide and generated over 70 double mutants within the same or among different TF families to explore the genetic interactions of candidate genes. Phenotype characterization on the secondary growth of the mutants and the overexpression lines identified promoters and inhibitors of cambium activity. The phenotypic data also suggested the redundancy within and among TF families because the phenotypes could be enhanced when additional TFs were mutated. We also found that combinations of certain overexpression lines and mutants led to pronounced increase of cell proliferation or xylem differentiation and in the extreme case the formation of ectopic cambium. We herein propose that cambium development is orchestrated by a wide network at the transcriptional level, where each TF has a different contribution to cell proliferation and differentiation. About 200 roots of 8 day-old seedlings were dissected into three segments (about 1cm per segment) and the basal (zone 1, ARRI, cambium), middle (zone 2, ARRII, transition cambium), and apical (zone 3, ARRIII, procambium) regions were separately collected. Protoplasts from these root segments were isolated and sorted through FACS, and then RNA transcripts collected from GFP expressing protoplasts were profiled on the Affymetrix ATH1 arrays. Specifically, these genome-wide cell type specific data were generated by hybridizing amplified and labeled mRNA that was isolated from specific root cell types onto an Affymetrix ATH1 array.