Single-cell transcriptome analyses recapitulate the cellular and developmental responses to abiotic stresses in rice

Abstract

The metabolism and reproduction of plants depend on the division of labors among cells. However, cells with various functions are often studied as a bulk where their specificities were diluted. Here, we apply single-cell RNA sequencing to the aerial part of rice seedlings growing in various environments. We capture the transcriptomes of thousands of cells, identify all major cell types, and reconstruct their developmental trajectories. We find that abiotic stresses not only affect gene expression in a cell-type-specific manner but also have impacts on the physical size of cells and the composition of cell populations. We validate some of these conclusions with microscopy and provide developmental mechanisms with computational analyses. Collectively, our study represents a benchmark-setting data resource of single-cell transcriptome atlas in rice and an illustration of exploiting such resource to drive discoveries in plant biology.