Timothy Nelson

One effort in the lab is aimed at understanding the formation of the regular venation pattern that appears to guide leaf cell differentiation on a fine scale. We have used three strategies to identify the genes and pathways that form the simple venation pattern of Arabidopsis leaves: 1) cloning of vascular pattern mutants, 2) screening of genes with provascular (PV)-specific expression patterns, and 3) analysis of expression profiles of PV cells by laser-capture microdissection (LCM) and microarray analysis. Recently, we characterized the roles of specific phosphoinositols (PIs) that regulate intracellular vesicle traffic essential for vein polarity and vascular cell continuity in developing leaves, and characterized several mutants with defective vein patterns that correspond to the proteins that produce or perceive these PIs. In collaboration with the Deng and Zhao labs, we mined our growing cell-specific transcriptome atlas for rice (http://plantgenomics.biology.yale.edu/riceatlas/) to identify a host of features specific to individual cell types, including cell-specific genes and promoter motifs, cell-specific pathways and hormone-response centers. In a third (collaborative) area of effort, we are undertaking a systems biology comparison of developing leaves of three grass species: rice (a C3-type plant), maize (moderate C4 plant), and sorghum (extreme C4 plant), to attempt to learn the molecular developmental basis of high-efficiency C4-type photosynthesis. We have thus far obtained the inventories of transcriptomes, proteomes and metabolites from maize developmental stages and physiological states and are now obtaining comparable data from corresponding stages and states of rice.