Live Imaging of the Shoot Apical Meristem of Intact, Soil-Grown, Flowering Arabidopsis Plants.

Abstract

All aerial organs in plants originate from the shoot apical meristem, a specialized tissue at the tip of a plant, enclosing a few stem cells. Understanding developmental dynamics within this tissue in relation to internal and external stimuli is of crucial importance. Imaging the meristem at the cellular level beyond very early stages requires the apex to be detached from the plant body, a procedure that does not allow studies in living, intact plants over longer periods. This protocol describes a new confocal microscopy method with the potential to image the shoot apical meristem of an intact, soil-grown, flowering Arabidopsis plant over several days. The setup opens new avenues to study apical stem cells, their interconnection with the whole plant, and their responses to environmental stimuli. Key features • Novel dissection and imaging method of the shoot apical meristem of Arabidopsis . • Procedure performed with intact, soil-grown, flowering plants. • Possibility of long-term live imaging of the shoot apical meristem. • Protocol can be adapted to different plant species.

Plant phenotyping relevance

生きた植物のシュート頂端分裂組織を長期間観察するための新規共焦点イメージング手法・プロトコルが中心であり、植物の形態・発生状態を取得する方法として収載対象です。

Code and data availability

This is a Bio-protocol methods article describing a live confocal imaging setup for Arabidopsis shoot apical meristems. The supplied blocks contain no public phenotype/trait datasets, no deposited image or sensor data, no author analysis code or workflows, and no trained models. The only supplementary item is a figure,

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