Laser capture microdissection and its applications in plants

Multicellular organisms consist of heterogeneous mixture of different cell types having distinct functions, morphology, physiology, and gene expression programs. This heterogeneity nature of tissues has been a challenge for studying the specific cell types independently and hence it was difficult to uncover the function of each cell type. For the effective analysis of specific cell types, the cell of interest needs to be isolated from neighboring cells or tissues. Even though this can be done using manual dissection, it has several limitations such as contamination and time consuming. To avoid the drawbacks this isolation is preferably performed using laser capture microdissection (LCM). LCM is a powerful tool for harvesting and subsequent molecular analysis of distinct cell populations under direct microscopic visualization. It has been applied for transcriptomics of several plant tissues including: transcriptional profiling of the Arabidopsis thaliana embryo and isolation of RNA from shoot apical meristem of Maize. Careful tissue preparations such as fixation, embedding, and sectioning are essential prerequisites for the success of LCM.