New Research Uncovers the Spatial Gene Expression of Major Cell Types from the Stems of Sorghum

Sorghum stems have great engineering potential for bioproduct production. However, mature sorghum stems have rigid cell walls that make it challenging to apply commonly used single cell techniques, which are needed to obtain detailed cellular information for targeted engineering. A multi-institutional team of researchers developed a protocol to isolate cell types for deep sequencing analysis to overcome this challenge.

The team successfully generated the first comprehensive gene expression atlas of the sorghum stem, which revealed cell-type-specific expression patterns, pathways, and underlying regulatory networks. This was achieved using innovative approaches developed by researchers at the Environmental Molecular Sciences Laboratory (EMSL), a Department of Energy (DOE) Office of Science user facility, which overcame inherent challenges associated with the properties of mature sorghum stems. This new high-throughput gene expression dataset can be used to generate new hypotheses and explore many scientific questions related to the genetic and biochemical pathways of stems from various types of grasses. 

This work was funded by the DOE Center for Advanced Bioenergy and Bioproducts Innovation and the DOE Great Lakes Bioenergy Research Center. A portion of this research was performed on a Large-Scale Research award from EMSL.

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