Unlike animals, plants continuously grow and develop organs throughout their life. This remarkable ability is achieved by maintaining a stable pool of stem cells, which are  embedded  in  the  meristem.  In  higher  plants,  shoot  apical  meristem  (SAM) harbors pluripotent stem cells in the center. Early in development SAM stem cell progenitors will differentiate in to organ primordia at the periphery of meristem, which will form leaves. However, later on meristem integrates environmental cues in to  development  thus  organ  primordia  will  emerge  as  flower  meristem  that  will produce flower organs. Similar to animals, differentiation of stem cells in to distinct cell types is essential to form the body parts of a plant. Currently, we are studying the gene  regulatory  network  underlying  the  cell  type  specification  in  plant  model organism  Arabidopsis  thaliana.  We  have  identified  several  transcription  factors (TFs) enriched in SAM cell types using fluorescent activated cell sorting followed with microarray analysis. We are taking a systems biology approach to understand the role of cell specific TFs in cell identity acquisition. Our lab has embarked upon to determine the expression pattern of epidermal and subepidermal cell type enriched TFs and their interaction with their cognate partners and immediate targets. We are using a variety of techniques such as molecular biology, genetics, genomics and live-imaging  to  resolve  the  gene  regulatory  networks  involved  in  cell  type specification in SAM.

• Yadav, R.K.#, Perales, M.#, Gruel, G.#, Ohno, C., Heisler, M., Grike, T., Jönsson, H., and Reddy, G.V. (2013) Plant stem cell maintenance involves direct transcriptional repression of differentiation program.   Molecular Systems Biology 9, 654. (# Co-first author)
• Yadav, R.K.#, Perales M.#, Girke, T., & Reddy, G.V., (2011) WUSCHEL protein movement mediates stem cell homeostasis. Genes & Development 25, 2025-2030. (# Co-first author)
• Liu, M., Chakraborty, A., Yadav, R. K., Meenakshisundaram, G., Reddy, G. V. & Roy-Chowdhury, A. (2011). Adaptive cell segmentation and tracking for volumetric confocal microscopy images of a developing plant meristem. Molecular Plant 4, 922-931.
• Prasad,  K.,  Grigg,  S.P.,  Barkoulas,  M.,  Yadav,  R.K.,  Sanchez-Perez, G.F.,  Pinon,  V.,  Blilou,  I.,  Hofhuis,  H., Dhonukshe. P., Galinha, C., Mähönen, A.P., Muller, W.H., Raman, S., Verkleij. A.J., Snel, B., Reddy, G.V., Tsiantis, M., Scheres, B. (2011). Arabidopsis PLETHORA transcription factors control phyllotaxis. Current Biology 21, 1123- 1128.
• Yadav, R.K. Tavakkoli, M. & Reddy, G.V. (2010). WUSCHEL mediates stem-cell homeostasis by regulating stem-cell number and patterns of cell division and differentiation of stem-cell progenitors. Development 137, 3581-3589.
• Liu,  M.,  Yadav,  R.  K.,  Roy-Chowdhury, A.  &  Reddy,  G.  V.  (2010). Automated  tracking  of  stem  cell  lineages  of Arabidopsis shoot apex using local graph matching. Plant Journal 62, 135-147.
• Oben Tataw, Min Liu, Ram. K. Yadav, Venugopala Reddy & Amit Roy-Chowdhurry (2010). Pattern analysis of stem cell growth dynamics in the shoot apex of Arabidopsis.  Intl. Conf. on Image Processing.
• Yadav, R.K., Girke, T., Pasala, S., Xie, M. & Reddy, G.V. (2009). Gene expression map of the Arabidopsis shoot apical meristem stem cell niche. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A 106, 4941-4946.
• Fulton, L., Batoux, M., Vaddepalli, P., Yadav, R.K., Busch, W., Andersen, S.U., Jeong, S., Lohmann, J.U. & Schneitz,K. (2009). DETORQUEO, QUIRKY, and ZERZAUST represent novel components involved in organ development mediated by the receptor-like kinase STRUBBELIG in Arabidopsis thaliana. PLoS Genet 5, e1000355.
• Yadav, R.K., Fulton, L., Batoux, M. & Schneitz, K. (2008). The Arabidopsis receptor-like kinase STRUBBELIG mediates inter-cell-layer signaling during floral development. Dev Biol 323, 261-270.

Book Chapters

• Yadav, R.K., Snipes, S., Girke, T. & Reddy, G.V. (2013). Organization of gene expression and its regulation in shoot apical meristem. Methods in Molecular Biology 959, 235-245.
• Chakraborty, A., Yadav, R.K., Liu, M., Tataw, M., Mkrtchyan, K., Amit Roy Chowdhury and Reddy, G.V. (2012) Computational tools for quantitative analysis of cell growth patterns and morphogenesis in actively developing plant stem cell niches. Methods in Molecular Biology. 876: 217-227.
• Fulton, L., Batoux, M., Yadav, R.K. and Schneitz, K. (2006) The genetic control of flower size and shape. Annual Plant Reviews 20, 71-97.