Fig. 1

Workflow illustration: LCM-mediated harvest of root cortex cells for metabolite profiling. Root fragments of mycorrhizal and non-mycorrhizal Medicago truncatula plants were lyophilized and sectioned with a cryostat (a and b). In 35 μm longitudinal sections, cortical cell populations were identified and isolated by laser microdissection (c and d). Approximately 13,000 cells for each cell type (arbuscule containing cells of mycorrhizal roots [arb] and cortical cells of non-colonized roots [cor]) were collected and subjected to derivatization (e). GC-EI/TOF-MS measurements facilitated the abundance of primary metabolites in the analysed samples (f). The corresponding compounds were identified through spectral matching against the National Institute of Standards and Technology library (NIST08) (g)