Real-time Analysis of Lateral Root Organogenesis in Arabidopsis

Plants maintain capacity to form new organs such as leaves, flowers, lateral shoots and roots throughout their postembryonic lifetime. Lateral roots (LRs) originate from a few pericycle cells that acquire attributes of founder cells (FCs), undergo series of anticlinal divisions, and give rise to a few short initial cells. After initiation, coordinated cell division and differentiation occur, giving rise to lateral root primordia (LRP). Primordia continue to grow, emerge through the cortex and epidermal layers of the primary root, and finally a new apical meristem is established taking over the responsibility for growth of mature lateral roots [for detailed description of the individual stages of lateral root organogenesis see Malamy and Benfey (1997)]. To examine this highly dynamic developmental process and to investigate a role of various hormonal, genetic and environmental factors in the regulation of lateral root organogenesis, the real time imaging based analyses represent extremely powerful tools (Laskowski et al., 2008; De Smet et al., 2012; Marhavý et al., 2013 and 2014). Herein, we describe a protocol for real time lateral root primordia (LRP) analysis, which enables the monitoring of an onset of the specific gene expression and subcellular protein localization during primordia organogenesis, as well as the evaluation of the impact of genetic and environmental perturbations on LRP organogenesis.