In situ isolation of mRNA from individual plant cells: creation of cell-specific cDNA libraries

Monte Carlo effect is a mechanism to isolate and clone mRNA population from individual cells in living and intact plant tissues. However, there is an inherent limitation of PCR amplification from small amounts of any complex template. Small random differences in amplification efficiency between individual templates in an amplifying cDNA population create the Monte Carlo effect which is dependent on template concentration. There is a remarkable variation of only rare mRNA in amplification at single-cell level.