Most wild plants and some crops of the Brassicaceae express self-incompatibility, which is a mechanism that allows stigmas to recognize and discriminate against "self" pollen, thus preventing self-fertilization and inbreeding. Self-incompatibility in this family is controlled by a single S locus containing two multiallelic genes that encode the stigma-expressed S-locus receptor kinase and its p...

Future developments in AI and robotics, brain interfaces, the Internet and virtual and augmented reality, will make possible new types of integration of humans and machines which will change how we think, learn and live. This paper uses a story about a future scenario involving systems of this kind to respond to crises and disasters to explore the possibilities of collective intelligence and co...

One factor that contributes to a successful fruit tree grafting is the establishment of symplasmic contacts in the graft interface to facilitate the transfer of compounds between scion and stock. Using novel experimental and theoretical approaches we investigated whether the localized incompatibility, experienced in some Prunus grafts, could be related to insufficient plasmodesmal coupling at a...

We have examined the effect of the protein phosphatase inhibitors okadaic acid and microcystin on pollen-pistil interactions in Brassica. Inhibitor-treated flowers or floral buds were pollinated with untreated pollen and examined for pollen tube growth by fluorescence microscopy. Our results show that type 1 or type 2A serine/threonine phosphatases play a crucial role in the pollination respons...