The molecular basis of recognition between plant cells is incompletely understood. Some principles established for recognition between animal cells may well apply to plant cell recognition, although, in contrast to animal cells, plant cells are encased by cell walls that play an active role in plant cell-cell recognition. The interaction that controls fertilization in flowering plants involves ...

Pollination in flowering plants requires that anthers release pollen when the gynoecium is competent to support fertilization. We show that in Arabidopsis thaliana, two paralogous auxin response transcription factors, ARF6 and ARF8, regulate both stamen and gynoecium maturation. arf6 arf8 double-null mutant flowers arrested as infertile closed buds with short petals, short stamen filaments, und...

BACKGROUND Pollen allergens are delivered to epithelial surfaces of the upper respiratory tract in conjunction with multiple endogenous adjuvants. We previously demonstrated pollen-mediated modulation of cytokine and chemokine production of dendritic cells, contributing to a Th2-dominated micromilieu. As T helper cell differentiation not only depends on dendritic cell-derived cytokines but also...

While stigma anatomy is well documented for a good number of species, little information is available on the acquisition and cessation of stigmatic receptivity. The aim of this work is to characterize the development of stigma receptivity, from anthesis to stigma degeneration, in the pentacarpellar pear (Pyrus communis) flower. Stigma development and stigmatic receptivity were monitored over tw...

The immune response of atopic individuals against allergens is characterized by increased levels of Th2 cytokines and chemokines. However, the way in which the cytokine/chemokine profile is matched to the type of invading allergen, and why these profiles sometimes derail and lead to disease, is not well understood. We recently demonstrated that pollen modulates dendritic cell (DC) function in a...

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...

We isolated a pollen-preferential gene, RICE IMMATURE POLLEN 1 (RIP1), from a T-DNA insertional population of japonica rice that was trapped by a promoterless beta-glucuronidase (GUS) gene. Semi-quantitative reverse transcription-PCR (RT-PCR) analyses confirmed that the RIP1 transcript was abundant at the late stages of pollen development. Transgenic plants carrying a T-DNA insertion in the RIP...

Microgametogenesis is the post-meiotic pollen developmental phase when unicellular microspores develop into mature tricellular pollen. In rice, microgametogenesis can influence grain yields to a great degree because pollen abortion occurs more easily during microgametogenesis than during other stages of pollen development. However, our knowledge of the genes involved in microgametogenesis in ri...

The dominant allergenic components of grass pollen are known by immunologists as group 1 allergens. These constitute a set of closely related proteins from the beta-expansin family and have been shown to have cell wall-loosening activity. Group 1 allergens may facilitate the penetration of pollen tubes through the grass stigma and style. In maize (Zea mays), group 1 allergens are divided into t...

The walls deposited by growing pollen tubes contain two types of beta-glucan, the (1,3)-beta-glucan callose and the (1,4)-beta-glucan cellulose, as well as various alpha-linked pectic polysaccharides. Pollen tubes of Nicotiana alata Link et Otto, an ornamental tobacco, were therefore used to identify genes potentially encoding catalytic subunits of the callose synthase and cellulose synthase en...