Dr. Xiaosa Jack Xu, Professor of Plant Biology at University of California Davis, will be presenting a talk about his work entitled “An Evolutionary View of Plant Inflorescence Development from Single-Cell and Spatial Profiling.”\u00a0 The abstract is as follows:<\/p>\n
Inflorescence architecture is a major determinant of reproductive success and crop yield, yet how its developmental regulation evolves across phylogenetic scales remains incompletely understood. Here, we integrate single-cell transcriptomics, spatial gene expression, and gene editing to examine inflorescence development across three hierarchical evolutionary levels: a deep comparison between monocots and eudicots, a closer comparison within cereal monocots, and a near-scale comparison between maize and its wild progenitor, teosinte.<\/p>\n
At the broadest scale, we generated a comparative single-cell atlas of developing inflorescences in Arabidopsis and maize. This analysis recovered thousands of stem cells marked by CLAVATA3<\/em> and WUSCHEL<\/em> and uncovered conserved stem cell regulators, including members of the SERPINE1 mRNA-binding protein family, revealing deeply conserved mechanisms underlying shoot meristem maintenance across monocots and eudicots.<\/p>\n At an intermediate scale, we performed an integrative analysis of single-cell transcriptomes from developing inflorescences of five cereal crops: maize, wheat, barley, rice, and sorghum. We identified shared cell populations and resolved distinct meristem subdomains, revealing a conserved core of meristematic cell identities and regulatory programs, alongside divergence in transcriptional programs associated with lateral organ initiation and differentiation that likely underlie species-specific cereal inflorescence architectures.<\/p>\n At the closest scale, we constructed a single-cell atlas of developing teosinte ears and compared it with maize to investigate domestication-associated changes in ear development. We identified cell-type-specific differentially expressed genes in inflorescence stem cells and axillary meristem-initiating cells, many showing signatures of selection during domestication. Higher-order mutants in SPL<\/em>, UB2<\/em>, UB3<\/em>, TSH4<\/em>, and GLUTAREDOXIN<\/em> genes reverted ear morphology toward teosinte-like forms.<\/p>\n The presentation will begin at 3:00 PM in Lapham Hall N101, preceded by an informal reception from 2:45 \u2013 3:00PM.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Dr. Xiaosa Jack Xu, Professor of Plant Biology at University of California Davis, will be presenting a talk about his work entitled “An Evolutionary View of Plant Inflorescence Development from Single-Cell and Spatial Profiling.”\u00a0 The abstract is as follows: Inflorescence …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":36924,"featured_media":9765,"template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_tribe_events_status":"","_tribe_events_status_reason":"","_tribe_events_is_hybrid":"","_tribe_events_is_virtual":"","_tribe_events_virtual_video_source":"","_tribe_events_virtual_embed_video":"","_tribe_events_virtual_linked_button_text":"","_tribe_events_virtual_linked_button":"","_tribe_events_virtual_show_embed_at":"","_tribe_events_virtual_show_embed_to":[],"_tribe_events_virtual_show_on_event":"","_tribe_events_virtual_show_on_views":"","_tribe_events_virtual_url":"","footnotes":"","uwm_wg_additional_authors":[]},"tags":[],"tribe_events_cat":[36],"class_list":["post-9764","tribe_events","type-tribe_events","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tribe_events_cat-colloquia","cat_colloquia"],"yoast_head":"\n