Laser Microdissection (LM): Applications to plant materials

Abstract

In recent years, Laser Microdissection (LM), which has been widely used in animal biology, has been adapted to plant tissues. This short paper focuses on some technical aspects concerning plant sample preparation for LM technology, with particular attention to the application of gene expression and proteomics studies. Examples derived from the use of different LM methods are reported and their applications to plant–microbe interactions are explored.

Key words:

• Cell specificity
• gene expression
• Laser Microdissection (LM)
• plant–microbe interactions

Acknowledgements

This research was funded by IPP-CNR and CEBIOVEM (D.M. 17/10/2003 prot. n. 193/2003) grants. We thank Valeria Bianciotto and Luisa Lanfranco for reading the manuscript.