Expression profiles within functional domains of the maize shoot apex

The shoot apical meristem (SAM) of plants, a specialized stem cell niche at the growing shoot tip, integrates developmental and environmental signals to direct the initiation and patterning of new organs such as leaves. Its activity throughout the plant's lifetime is tightly controlled. To gain insight into gene regulatory networks behind stem cell maintenance and organogenesis, we generated a high-resolution gene expression atlas of 9 distinct domains and cell types within the vegetative shoot apex of 14 day-old maize B73 seedlings using laser microdissection and RNA deep sequencing. Biological duplicate samples were collected for each of the following domains: the meristem, the L1 and L2 lineage layers, the incipient leaf (or P0), developing leaf primordia P1, P2 and P3, as well as the internode primordium below the P0 and vasculature. The quality of microdissection was verified by expression analysis of known markers.

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