Publication Date:
2007-08-04
Description:
In flowering plants, signaling between the male pollen tube and the synergid cells of the female gametophyte is required for fertilization. In the Arabidopsis thaliana mutant feronia (fer), fertilization is impaired; the pollen tube fails to arrest and thus continues to grow inside the female gametophyte. FER encodes a synergid-expressed, plasma membrane-localized receptor-like kinase. We found that the FER protein accumulates asymmetrically in the synergid membrane at the filiform apparatus. Interspecific crosses using pollen from Arabidopsis lyrata and Cardamine flexuosa on A. thaliana stigmas resulted in a fer-like phenotype that correlates with sequence divergence in the extracellular domain of FER. Our findings show that the female control of pollen tube reception is based on a FER-dependent signaling pathway, which may play a role in reproductive isolation barriers.〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Notes: 〈/span〉Escobar-Restrepo, Juan-Miguel -- Huck, Norbert -- Kessler, Sharon -- Gagliardini, Valeria -- Gheyselinck, Jacqueline -- Yang, Wei-Cai -- Grossniklaus, Ueli -- New York, N.Y. -- Science. 2007 Aug 3;317(5838):656-60.〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Author address: 〈/span〉Institute of Plant Biology and Zurich-Basel Plant Science Center, University of Zurich, Zollikerstrasse 107, CH-8008 Zurich, Switzerland.〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Record origin:〈/span〉 〈a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17673660" target="_blank"〉PubMed〈/a〉
Keywords:
Arabidopsis/enzymology/genetics/*physiology
;
Arabidopsis Proteins/chemistry/*genetics/*metabolism
;
Brassicaceae/genetics/physiology
;
Cell Membrane/enzymology
;
Crosses, Genetic
;
Evolution, Molecular
;
Flowers/cytology/enzymology/*physiology
;
Gene Expression
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Genes, Plant
;
Germination
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Ligands
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Molecular Sequence Data
;
Mutation
;
Phosphorylation
;
Phosphotransferases/chemistry/*genetics/*metabolism
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Plant Epidermis/enzymology
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Pollen Tube/growth & development/*physiology
;
Recombinant Fusion Proteins/metabolism
;
Reproduction
;
Seeds/growth & development
;
Signal Transduction
;
Species Specificity
Print ISSN:
0036-8075
Electronic ISSN:
1095-9203
Topics:
Biology
,
Chemistry and Pharmacology
,
Computer Science
,
Medicine
,
Natural Sciences in General
,
Physics
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