Identification of cell fate specification mechanisms during early embryogenesis in Arabidopsis

本研究旨在寻找拟南芥胚胎发生过程中的关键基因。合子胚胎发生是单细胞受精卵在真核有性生殖过程中经过一系列细胞分裂、构型和细胞类型规范形成复杂胚胎的基本发育过程。在开花植物拟南芥中，受精卵以固定的模式分裂，使它们成为观察胚胎形态和追踪细胞谱系的理想系统。虽然几十年的遗传分析已经确定了一些在胚胎发育中发挥关键作用的基因，但直到最近，由于技术困难，全基因组分析才变得可行。我们利用已发表的胚胎转录组数据集来搜索胚胎发生的关键调控基因，并解析潜在的调控网络。利用生物信息学的方法，我们选择了一些候选基因进行进一步的验证和分析。识别胚胎细胞分裂和规格中的关键因素将极大地提高我们对开花植物胚胎发生机制的了解，这对于理解使多细胞真核生物生存的基本生物学过程是重要的。

This study aims to identify the key genes involved during embryogenesis in Arabidopsis thaliana (Arabidopsis). Zygotic embryogenesis is a fundamental developmental process in which a single-celled zygote goes through a series of cell divisions, patterning and cell type specifications to form a complex embryo during eukaryotic sexual reproduction. In the flowering plant Arabidopsis, the zygotes divide with a stereotypic pattern, making them an ideal system to observe embryo morphology and to trace cell lineage. While decades of genetic analyses have identified a number of genes that play vital roles in embryogenesis, the genome-wide analyses were not feasible until recently due to technical difficulties. We utilized published embryonic transcriptome datasets to search for key regulatory genes of embryogenesis as well as to resolve the underlying regulatory networks. With bioinformatics approaches, we selected a number of candidate genes for further validations and analyses. Identifying the key factors involved in embryonic cell divisions and specifications will greatly improve our knowledge of flowering plant embryogenesis mechanisms, which is important for understanding the fundamental biological process enabling multicellular eukaryotic lives.