A single-cell atlas of Arabidopsis root

in Presentations, Publications February 9, 2022 1,845 Views

Rachel Shahan, Ph.D., and Che-Wei Hsu, together with their collaborators, created this atlas of a plant root. The atlas was generated using a technique called single-cell RNA-sequencing, which samples gene expression from individual cells. By condensing the data to three dimensions, the result is a colorful swirl of dots (110,427 dots to be exact), with each dot representing one cell.

The location of the dots represents how similar a cell is to its neighbors. Dots are grouped closer together if the cells express the same genes. Since an individual root contains cells at all stages of maturation, the atlas could shed light on how stem cells produce different cell and tissue types.

Learn more about the Benfey lab here: https://sites.duke.edu/benfey/

Shahan R, Hsu CW, Nolan TM, Cole BJ, Taylor IW, Greenstreet L, Zhang S, Afanassiev A, Vlot AHC, Schiebinger G, Benfey BN, Ohler U. (2022) A single-cell Arabidopsis root atlas reveals developmental trajectories in wild-type and cell identity mutants. Dev Cell [Epub ahead of print]. [article]