To begin, place the surface-sterilized Arabidopsis thaliana Col-0 seeds onto a plate containing seed germination medium. After two days of cold stratification, move the plate to a cultivation room set at 21 degrees Celsius with a long day photoperiod and 50%humidity. Transfer one-week old seedlings to a plant culture box with a plant growth medium.
Grow the Agrobacterium tumefaciens culture in LB medium until it reaches an optical density at 600 nanometers of 0.9 to 1. Using a needle mounted on an insulin syringe, inject approximately 50 microliters of bacterial culture at the base of the primary inflorescent stem of a one-month old Arabidopsis plantlet. Scratch the tissue on the surface of the primary stem with the syringe.
After two to four weeks, excise the emerging hairy roots and cultivate them on a Petri dish with the hairy root growth medium supplemented with antibiotics to suppress agrobacterial growth. Culture the hairy root at 24 degrees Celsius in the dark. After one to two weeks, individualize the hairy roots on the plate with hairy root growth medium and transfer selected hairy root lines to a fresh medium every four to five weeks.
Transfer the hairy roots to a plate with a regeneration medium to induce callus formation, and culture at 21 degrees Celsius in a long day photoperiod. Once the shoots emerge from the callus, cut the shoots and transfer them to a shoot elongation medium for two to three weeks to promote growth and elongation. Then transfer the elongated shoots to the root induction medium.
Finally, transfer the rooted plant to the soil to perform transgenic selection. In A.thaliana, yellow calli were induced within 14 days in all tested hairy root lines. First shoot primordia, visible as dark green spots, emerged within three weeks after transfer to the regeneration medium.
After four weeks, shoots covered the hairy roots in 90%of the lines, with some cases showing adventitious root formation. However, one line did not regenerate even after three months. Compared to the wild type, hairy root regenerants of A.thaliana displayed a dwarf phenotype with dense root systems, wrinkled leaves, and altered flowering time.
