Data from: Freeze-quenched maize mesophyll and bundle sheath separation uncovers bias in previous tissue-specific RNA-Seq data

The high efficiency of C4 photosynthesis relies on spatial division of
labor, classically with initial carbon fixation in the mesophyll and
carbon reduction in the bundle sheath. By employing grinding and serial
filtration over liquid nitrogen, we enriched C4 tissues along a developing
leaf gradient. This method treats both C4 tissues in an
integrity-preserving and consistent manner, while allowing complementary
measurements of metabolite abundance and enzyme activity, thus providing a
comprehensive data set. Meta-analysis of this and the previous studies
highlights the strengths and weaknesses of different C4 tissue separation
techniques. While the method reported here achieves the least enrichment,
it is the only one that shows neither strong 3′ (degradation) bias, nor
different severity of 3′ bias between samples. The meta-analysis
highlighted previously unappreciated observations, such as an accumulation
of evidence that aspartate aminotransferase is more mesophyll specific
than expected from the current NADP-ME C4 cycle model, and a shift in
enrichment of protein synthesis genes from bundle sheath to mesophyll
during development. The full comparative dataset is available for
download, and a web visualization tool (available at
http://www.plant-biochemistry.hhu.de/resources.html) facilitates
comparison of the the Z. mays bundle sheath and mesophyll studies, their
consistencies and their conflicts.