The pool of tubulin protein in tissues of Arabidopsis is provided by the expression of multiple alpha-tubulin (TUA) and beta-tubulin genes. Whereas most tubulin genes are expressed in many tissues, previous evidence suggested that the TUA1 gene might be expressed primarily in pollen. We now report a detailed analysis of TUA1 expression during Arabidopsis development. In RNA from tissues of diss...

Although "dry-type" stigmas are widely regarded as ancestral in angiosperms, the early-divergent family Annonaceae has copious stigmatic exudate. We evaluate three putative functions for this exudate: as a nutritive reward for pollinators; as a pollen germination medium; and as an extragynoecial compitum that enables pollen tube growth between carpels. Stigmatic exudate is fructose dominated (7...

PREMISE OF THE STUDY The role of pollen flow within and between cultivated and wild tropical crop species is little known. To study the pollen flow of cacao, we estimated the degree of self-pollination and pollen dispersal distances as well as gene flow between wild and cultivated cacao (Theobroma cacao L.). METHODS We studied pollen flow and genetic diversity of cultivated and wild cacao pop...

The highly resistant biopolymer, sporopollenin, gives the outer wall (exine) of spores and pollen grains their unparalleled strength, shielding these structures from terrestrial stresses. Despite a limited understanding of the composition of sporopollenin, it appears that the synthesis of sporopollenin occurs in the tapetum and requires the transport of one or more sporopollenin constituents to...

BACKGROUND AND AIMS The ultrastructure of the pollen tubes and the unusual multicellular stigmatic hairs of Trithuria, the sole genus of Hydatellaceae, are described in the context of comparative studies of stigmatic and transmitting tissue in other early-divergent angiosperms. METHODS Scanning and transmission electron microscopy and immunocytochemistry are used to study the structure and co...

Brassica campestris Male Fertility 2 (BcMF2) is a putative polygalacturonase (PG) gene previously isolated from the flower bud of Chinese cabbage (Brassica campestris L. ssp. chinensis Makino, syn. B. rapa ssp. chinensis). This gene was found to be expressed specifically in tapetum and pollen after the tetrad stage of anther development. Antisense RNA technology was used to study the function o...

Breakdown of genetically enforced self-incompatibility (SI), an extremely common and important evolutionary transition in plants, has conventionally been conceived as a qualitative rather than a quantitative change. We evaluated qualitative and quantitative variation in SI for four populations of Witheringia solanacea in Costa Rica, examining growth of self-pollen tubes in pollinations of buds ...

Members of the P4 subfamily of P-type ATPases are thought to create and maintain lipid asymmetry in biological membranes by flipping specific lipids between membrane leaflets. In Arabidopsis, 7 of the 12 Aminophospholipid ATPase (ALA) family members are expressed in pollen. Here we show that double knockout of ALA6 and ALA7 (ala6/7) results in siliques with a ~2-fold reduction in seed set with ...

HIGHLIGHTSIn an abortive ovary of hazel, an integument seldom differentiated and a mature embryo sac never developed.In an abortive ovary of hazel, pollen tube growth was arrested at the style base about 40 days after blooming. Thus, fertilization of the ovule was precluded.Ovary abortion in the four hybrid cultivars was indicated to be associated with insufficient resource availability to supp...