Maybe she's NOT the boss: male-female crosstalk during sexual plant reproduction

Abstract

New insights into the molecular dialogue between male and female during sexual plant reproduction show that even plant sex does not work without clear communication.

Fig. 1

Pollination in sexual plant reproduction. a Overview of a pollinated pistil: pollen grains (orange circles) land on the stigma. Compatible pollen grains hydrate and germinate and the pollen tubes (orange) grow within the transmitting tract through the style towards the ovary to deliver the sperm cells to the ovules. The two sperm cells (blue) are contained in a common extracellular matrix within the pollen tube and connected to the vegetative nucleus (black ellipse) by a cytoplasmic projection. b In the transmitting tract, pollen tubes can grow between neighboring cells or penetrate a cell and grow within the cell wall. c The pollen tube, after exiting the transmitting tract and being attracted by an unfertilized ovule, grows along the funiculus to the micropyle. After appropriate signaling during pollen tube reception, the pollen tube grows rapidly across and penetrates one of the two synergids (yellow), ruptures, and releases the two sperm cells, one each fertilizing the egg cell (red) and the central cell (gray) to produce the embryo and the endosperm, respectively