Most of what is known about root development comes from plants grown on transparent agar, a poor substitute for soil. Rubén Rellán-Álvarez and colleagues developed GLO-Roots, which expresses luciferase in the root and images the resulting light through soil in flat rhizotrons. The system captures whole, intact root systems over weeks, and separate luciferases allow root architecture, gene expression and interactions between neighboring plants to be followed at the same time. It brings quantitative imaging to root systems growing in a realistic environment.
Coverage: Carnegie Science | Nature Methods
Rellán-Álvarez R, Lobet G, Lindner H, Pradier P-L, Sebastian J, Yee MC, Geng Y, Trontin C, LaRue T, Schrager A, Haney C, Nieu R, Maloof J, Vogel JP, Dinneny JR (2015) GLO-Roots: an imaging platform enabling multidimensional characterization of soil-grown root systems. eLife 4:e07597. doi: 10.7554/eLife.07597
Dinneny lab 