Marcos Danielle, Berleth Thomas
Department of Cell & Systems Biology, University of Toronto, Toronto, ON, Canada.
Methods Mol Biol. 2009;495:11-20. doi: 10.1007/978-1-59745-477-3_2.
The phytohormone auxin plays a pivotal role in plant development, regulating a myriad of processes including embryo patterning, root patterning, organ initiation, and vein patterning. Auxin is unique among the plant hormones as it is actively transported from cell to cell in a polar fashion. It has recently been discovered that polar auxin transport generates dynamic, local auxin gradients within plant tissues that appear to provide positional information in patterning processes. Visualization of apparent auxin transport patterns has largely been facilitated by the recent creation of translational fusions of GFP to members of the Arabidopsis (At)PIN family of auxin efflux associated proteins. Confocal visualization of these fusion products (PIN:GFPs) enables the tracking of apparent auxin transport patterns in a huge number of samples. This visualization method can be combined with experimental interference, such as local auxin application and inhibition of auxin transport, to deduce possible self-organizing auxin-dependent patterning mechanisms and to make them amenable to mathematical modeling.
植物激素生长素在植物发育过程中起着关键作用，调控着众多过程，包括胚胎模式形成、根模式形成、器官起始和叶脉模式形成。生长素在植物激素中独具特色，因为它以极性方式在细胞间进行主动运输。最近发现，极性生长素运输在植物组织内产生动态的局部生长素梯度，这些梯度似乎在模式形成过程中提供位置信息。拟南芥（At）PIN生长素输出相关蛋白家族成员与绿色荧光蛋白（GFP）的翻译融合体的新近构建，极大地促进了对生长素明显运输模式的可视化。对这些融合产物（PIN:GFP）进行共聚焦可视化，能够追踪大量样本中生长素的明显运输模式。这种可视化方法可以与实验干扰相结合，如局部施加生长素和抑制生长素运输，以推断可能的自组织生长素依赖性模式形成机制，并使其适用于数学建模。
