While in the movie Deadpool it is possible for a human to recreate an arm from scratch, in reality plants can even surpass that. Not only can they regenerate lost parts, but also the whole plant body can be reborn from a few existing cells. Despite the decades old realization that plant cells possess the ability to regenerate a complete shoot and root system, it is only now that the underlying mechanisms are being unraveled. De novo plant regeneration involves the initiation of regenerative mass, acquisition of the pluripotent state, reconstitution of stem cells and assembly of regulatory interactions. Recent studies have furthered our understanding on the making of a complete plant system in the absence of embryonic positional cues. We review the recent studies probing the molecular mechanisms of de novo plant regeneration in response to external inductive cues and our current knowledge of direct reprogramming of root to shoot and vice versa. We further discuss how de novo regeneration can be exploited to meet the demands of green culture industries and to serve as a general model to address the fundamental questions of regeneration across the plant kingdom.

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Aerial organs of plants, being highly prone to local injuries, require tissue restoration to ensure their survival. However, knowledge of the underlying mechanism is sparse. In this study, we mimicked natural injuries in growing leaves and stems to study the reunion between mechanically disconnected tissues. We show that PLETHORA (PLT) and AINTEGUMENTA (ANT) genes, which encode stem cellpromoting factors, are activated and contribute to vascular regeneration in response to these injuries. PLT proteins bind to and activate the CUC2 promoter. PLT proteins and CUC2 regulate the transcription of the local auxin biosynthesis gene YUC4 in a coherent feed-forward loop, and this process is necessary to drive vascular regeneration. In the absence of this PLT-mediated regeneration response, leaf ground tissue cells can neither acquire the early vascular identity marker ATHB8, nor properly polarise auxin transporters to specify new venation paths. The PLT-CUC2 module is required for vascular regeneration, but is dispensable for midvein formation in leaves. We reveal the mechanisms of vascular regeneration in plants and distinguish between the wound-repair ability of the tissue and its formation during normal development.

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BackgroundPlants have the remarkable property to elaborate entire body plan from any tissue part. The conversion of lateral root primordium (LRP) to shoot is an ideal method for plant propagation and for plant researchers to understand the mechanism underlying trans-differentiation. Until now, however, a robust method that allows the efficient conversion of LRP to shoot is lacking. This has limited our ability to study the dynamic phases of reprogramming at cellular and molecular levels.ResultsHere we present an efficient protocol for the direct conversion of LRP to a complete fertile shoot system. This protocol can be readily applied to the various ecotypes of Arabidopsis. We show that, the conversion process is highly responsive to developmental stages of LRP and changes in external environmental stimuli such as temperature. The entire conversion process can be adequately analyzed by histological and imaging techniques. As a demonstration, using a battery of cell fate specific markers, we show that confocal time-lapse imaging can be employed to uncover the early molecular events, intermediate developmental phases and relative abundance of stem cell regulators during the conversion of LRP to shoot.ConclusionOur method is highly efficient, independent of genotypes tested and suitable to study the reprogramming of LRP to shoot in intact plants as well as in excised roots.Electronic supplementary materialThe online version of this article (doi:10.1186/s13007-016-0127-5) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.