Abstract
Plants typically produce numerous flowers whose meiotic chromosomes are relatively easy to observe, making them excellent structures for studying the cellular processes underlying meiosis. In recent years, breakthroughs in light and electron microscopic technologies for small chromosomes, combined with molecular genetic methods, have resulted in major advances in the understanding of meiosis in the model plant Arabidopsis thaliana. In this chapter, we summarize protocols for basic cytology, fluorescence in situ hybridization, immunofluorescence, electron microscopy, and isolation of male meiocytes for the analysis of Arabidopsis meiosis.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Ma H (2005) Molecular genetic analyses of microsporogenesis and microgametogenesis in flowering plants. Ann Rev Plant Biol 56:393–434
Stack S (1973) The synaptonemal complex and the achiasmatic condition. J Cell Sci 13:83–95
Anderson LK, Stack SM, Fox MH et al (1985) The relationship between genome size and synaptonemal complex length in higher plants. Exp Cell Res 156:367–378
Golubovskaya IN (1979) Genetic control of meiosis. Int Rev Cytol 58:247–290
Initiative AG (2000) Analysis of the genome sequence of the flowering plant Arabidopsis thaliana. Nature 408:796–815
Mercier R, Grelon M (2008) Meiosis in plants: ten years of gene discovery. Cytogenet Genome Res 120:281–290
Ma H (2006) A molecular portrait of Arabidopsis meiosis. Arabidopsis Book 4:1–39
Osman K, Higgins JD, Sanchez-Moran E et al (2011) Pathways to meiotic recombination in Arabidopsis thaliana. New Phytol 190:523–544
Zickler D, Kleckner N (1999) Meiotic chromosomes: integrating structure and function. Ann Rev Genet 33:603–754
Wijeratne AJ, Chen C, Zhang W et al (2006) The Arabidopsis thaliana PARTING DANCERS gene encoding a novel protein is required for normal meiotic homologous recombination. Mol Biol Cell 17:1331–1343
Li W, Yang X, Lin Z et al (2005) The AtRAD51C gene is required for normal meiotic chromosome synapsis and double-stranded break repair in Arabidopsis. Plant Physiol 138:965–976
Li W, Chen C, Markmann-Mulisch U et al (2004) The Arabidopsis AtRAD51 gene is dispensable for vegetative development but required for meiosis. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A 101:10596–10601
Chen C, Zhang W, Timofejeva L et al (2005) The Arabidopsis ROCK-N-ROLLERS gene encodes a homolog of the yeast ATP-dependent DNA helicase MER3 and is required for normal meiotic crossover formation. Plant J 43:321–334
Armstrong SJ, Sanchez-Moran E, Franklin FC (2009) Cytological analysis of Arabidopsis thaliana meiotic chromosomes. Methods Mol Biol 558:131–145
Wang M, Wang K, Tang D et al (2010) The central element protein ZEP1 of the synaptonemal complex regulates the number of crossovers during meiosis in rice. Plant Cell 22:417–430
Hamant O, Ma H, Cande WZ (2006) Genetics of meiotic prophase I in plants. Ann Rev Plant Biol 57:267–302
Martin JA, Wang Z (2011) Next-generation transcriptome assembly. Nat Rev Genet 12:671–682
Yang WC, Shi DQ, Chen YH (2010) Female gametophyte development in flowering plants. Ann Rev Plant Biol 61:89–108
Scott RJ, Spielman M, Dickinson HG (2004) Stamen structure and function. Plant Cell 16:S46–S60
Yang HX, Lu PL, Wang YX et al (2011) The transcriptome landscape of Arabidopsis male meiocytes from high-throughput sequencing: the complexity and evolution of the meiotic process. Plant J 65:503–516
Acknowledgment
We thank Dr. Zaibao Zhang and Jiyue Huang for helpful suggestions and comments. This work was supported by grants from the Ministry of Sciences and Technology of China (2011CB944600).
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2014 Springer Science+Business Media, New York
About this protocol
Cite this protocol
Wang, Y., Cheng, Z., Lu, P., Timofejeva, L., Ma, H. (2014). Molecular Cell Biology of Male Meiotic Chromosomes and Isolation of Male Meiocytes in Arabidopsis thaliana . In: Riechmann, J., Wellmer, F. (eds) Flower Development. Methods in Molecular Biology, vol 1110. Humana Press, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-9408-9_10
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-9408-9_10
Published:
Publisher Name: Humana Press, New York, NY
Print ISBN: 978-1-4614-9407-2
Online ISBN: 978-1-4614-9408-9
eBook Packages: Springer Protocols