Tools for Assessing Cell Cycle Progression in Plants.

Estimation of cell cycle parameters is crucial for understanding the developmental programs established during the formation of an organism. A number of complementary approaches has been developed and adapted to plants to assess the cell-cycle status in different proliferative tissues. The most classical methods relying on metabolic labeling are still very much employed and give valuable information on cell cycle progression in fixed tissues. However, the growing knowledge of plant cell cycle regulators with defined expression pattern together with the development of fluorescent proteins technology enabled the generation of fusion proteins that function individually or in conjunction as cell cycle reporters. Together with the improvement of imaging techniques, in vivo live imaging to monitor plant cell cycle progression in normal growth conditions or in response to different stimuli has been possible. Here we review these tools and their specific outputs for plant cell cycle analysis.