Image of the month (April 2010)

Four states of double fertilization

This image made the cover of March 2010 issue of PLoS Genetics and accompanied a research article entitled "HAP2(GCS1)-Dependent Gamete Fusion Requires a Positively Charged Carboxy-Terminal Domain" authored by Julian L. Wong, Alexander R. Leydon, Mark A. Johnson at the Department of Molecular Biology, Cell Biology, and Biochemistry, Brown University, Providence, Rhode Island, United States of America

From the description that accompanied the cover art in the March 2010 issue of PLos Genetics:

"In flowering plants, a pollen tube delivers two sperm to an ovule: one fuses with the egg to form an embryo (magenta), and the other fuses with the central cell to form endosperm (green, top ovule). Sperm with reduced function of HAP2(GCS1), a sperm-expressed transmembrane protein, are either completely infertile (left), fertilize the egg but not the central cell (right), or fertilize the central cell but not the egg (bottom). In this issue of PLoS Genetics, Wong et al. use molecular genetic studies in Arabidopsis to define critical features of HAP2(GCS1), a deeply conserved protein essential for gamete fusion.

Image Credit: Julian L. Wong and Alexander R. Leydon (Department of Molecular Biology, Cell Biology, and Biochemistry, Brown University, USA)"

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