Abstract

Meiosis is essential for sexual reproduction, as it produces haploid cells that will differentiate into gametes, by a single round of replication and two rounds of chromosome segregation. During meiosis homologous chromosomes pair and recombine, which can lead to reciprocal exchange of genetic material fragments or crossovers (COs), a process that generates genetic variation between generations. Therefore, identifying the molecular controls of meiosis is of great interest for agriculture and crop breeding (Tock and Henderson, 2018, Mercier et al., 2015).

In flowering plants, meiotic cells develop within layers of somatic tissue (sub-epidermal cells) in the ovules and anthers. However, purifying these small population of cells represents a major limitation in the characterization of plant meiosis. The aim of my project is to separate meiotic cells from somatic cells of floral organs in order to perform meiotic cell specific gene expression analysis and chromatin profiles. For this, I am currently optimising for meiosis, a specific purification approach called INTACT (isolation of nuclei tagged in specific cell types), that allows the affinity-based isolation of nuclei from individual cell types of a tissue (Deal and Henikoff, 2010).

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3. Tock and Henderson. Hotspots for initiation of meiotic recombination. Front Genet. 2018; 9: 521.