Focus on roots.
Focus on roots.
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专注于根源。
DOI：
10.1104/pp.114.900494
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发表时间：
2014
期刊：
影响因子：
7.4
通讯作者：
Geldner N
中科院分区：
文献类型：
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作者：
Geldner N
植物生物学家通常会指出植物中被忽视的、隐藏的部分的重要性，即它们的根。令人惊讶的是，更好地了解根系可以为当今农业面临的挑战做出多大贡献，即更好地利用肥料和水，以及在各种非生物和生物胁迫条件下的持续生产力。然而，通过这本专注于根的焦点问题的页面，人们敏锐地意识到研究人员在处理这种植物器官时面临的巨大挑战，并提醒人们不要在植物的这一部分工作的所有好理由。根的本质是埋在土壤中，与基质接触最密切，很难观察到它们的生长和发育，更不用说将它们完整地从土壤中提取出来了。此外，土壤是一种具有令人难以置信的异质性和复杂性的基质，其复杂的化学和物理结构因微生物群落形式的生物多样性而得到加强。幸运的是，了解根生长和发育的基本机制可以在琼脂生长的年轻拟南芥（Arabidopsis thaliana）植物的美丽简单，受控和保护系统中获得。虽然高度人工，这个系统已被证明非常适合分析，拟南芥根分生组织可以说是比大多数空中植物器官更好地研究和理解，为同事们在更自然的条件下从事作物根系工作的挑战提供了宝贵的基础。《根的焦点问题》很好地说明了当前根研究中的这种创造性弧，从拟南芥等模型实验系统的工作，到作物，甚至到树木。在从拟南芥到其他植物系统的驱动中，人们经常忘记，拟南芥的力量与基因组序列的可用性和轻松询问转录组的能力关系不大，这些东西现在在许多生物体中都可以得到，更多的是通过基因敲除和遗传转化来确定基因功能的容易程度。此外，拟南芥仍然是无与伦比的能力，其成像的共聚焦显微镜，其非常薄和低荧光的根系的结果。在这期焦点问题中，罗恩等人。（2014）提出了一套鼓舞人心的工具，番茄（茄属）。毛状根系统，展示了细胞类型特异性转录组分析，荧光报告共聚焦成像，和最新的集群定期间隔短回文重复序列技术可以结合成一个强大的系统，用于调查拟南芥以外的根生物学。
It is common for plant biologists to point out the importance of the neglected, hidden segment of plants that are their roots. It is striking to contemplate how much a better understanding of roots could contribute to the challenges facing agriculture today, namely a better use of fertilizer and water, as well as sustained productivity under various abiotic and biotic stress conditions. Yet, going through the pages of this Focus Issue dedicated entirely to roots, one becomes acutely aware of the formidable challenges that researchers are facing when tackling this plant organ, and one is reminded of all the good reasons not to work on this part of the plant. The nature of roots is to bury themselves into the soil and to enter into most intimate contact with their substrate, such that it is very hard to observe their growth and development, much less to extract them from the soil intact. Moreover, the soil is a substrate of mind-boggling heterogeneity and complexity, its complicated chemical and physical structure being potentiated by the biological diversity in the form of microbial communities. Luckily, an understanding of the fundamental mechanisms underlying root growth and development can be obtained in the beautifully simple, controlled, and protected system of agar-grown, young Arabidopsis (Arabidopsis thaliana) plants. Although highly artificial, this system has proven extremely amenable to analysis, and the Arabidopsis root meristem is arguably better studied and understood than most aerial plant organs, providing an invaluable basis for colleagues taking up the challenge of working on root systems of crop plants under more natural conditions. The Roots Focus Issue is a great illustration of this creative arc in current root research, spanning from work on model experimental systems such as Arabidopsis, to crops, and even to trees.In the drive from Arabidopsis to other plants systems, it is often forgotten that the power of Arabidopsis has less to do with the availability of genome sequences and the ability to easily interrogate transcriptomes, things that are now available in many organisms, and more to do with the ease by which gene functions can be determined through knockouts and genetic transformations. In addition, Arabidopsis remains unrivaled in its ability to be imaged by confocal microscopy, a consequence of its very thin and low-fluorescent root system. In this Focus Issue, Ron et al.(2014) present a set of inspiring tools for the tomato (Solanum spp.) hairy root system, demonstrating how cell type-specific transcriptome profiling, confocal imaging of fluorescent reporters, and the latest cluster regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats technology can be combined into a powerful system for investigating root biology outside Arabidopsis.