Plant Sex signal found Closer to animal Immune related molecule
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MC Arunan
Jun 5, 2010, 1:55:42 AM6/5/10
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Dear all,
tgk in the Biology_Networkgroup sends us this report on Immune related molecules involved in plant fertilization. See below an excerpt. If any one needs full acccount with links please write to us.
Arunan
for
Biology Network
Today, more than a century after a German-Polish botanist first described the process of fertilization in flowering plants, scientists have identified an elusive molecular signal critical to that process.
The finding sheds light on the evolution of plant fertilization mechanisms and could lead to strategies to overcome species-specific barriers for crossbreeding crops.
When a pollen grain, which contains the male sperm, lands on another plant, it grows a pollen tube into the female reproductive tissues. Eventually, the pollen tube halts and bursts to release two sperm cells, one to fertilize the egg and another to fuse with a female cell and generate the endosperm, a tissue providing nutrition to the embryo. But little has been known about the cell-to-cell signaling between the male and female cells that causes the pollen tube to stop growing and rupture.
Nine years ago, while looking for molecules that attract the pollen tube toward the female egg cells in maize, Thomas Dresselhaus and colleagues at the University of Regensburg in Germany stumbled across four defensin-like proteins expressed exclusively in the embryo sac. It was a strange discovery, since defensin proteins are typically involved in the immune systems of plants, insects, and other animals.
The finding sheds light on the evolution of plant fertilization mechanisms and could lead to strategies to overcome species-specific barriers for crossbreeding crops.
When a pollen grain, which contains the male sperm, lands on another plant, it grows a pollen tube into the female reproductive tissues. Eventually, the pollen tube halts and bursts to release two sperm cells, one to fertilize the egg and another to fuse with a female cell and generate the endosperm, a tissue providing nutrition to the embryo. But little has been known about the cell-to-cell signaling between the male and female cells that causes the pollen tube to stop growing and rupture.
Nine years ago, while looking for molecules that attract the pollen tube toward the female egg cells in maize, Thomas Dresselhaus and colleagues at the University of Regensburg in Germany stumbled across four defensin-like proteins expressed exclusively in the embryo sac. It was a strange discovery, since defensin proteins are typically involved in the immune systems of plants, insects, and other animals.
Savithri Singh
Jun 5, 2010, 10:46:42 AM6/5/10
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