Video 20. Description of the Arabidopsis semi-in vivo pollen tube guidance assay.

This time-lapse movie describes the steps that need to be undertaken to set up the assay as previously described (Palanivelu & Preuss (2006), BMC Plant Biology, 6:7). The assay can be used to monitor pollen tube-ovule interactions. Since the assay is modular, any combination of the three components of the assay (pollen, stigma/style and ovules) can be tested, including genetically impossible combinations such as the behavior of wild type pollen tubes grown through a wild-type pistil with mutant ovules.

Reference: Palanivelu, R., and Tsukamoto, T. (2012). Pathfinding in angiosperm reproduction: pollen tube guidance by pistils ensures successful double fertilization. WIREs Dev Biol. 1:96-113. Link to the article or download the pdf file.