Image of the month (August 2013)

apertureless Arabidopsis pollen

This image is from recent articles by Dobritsa et al 2011 and 2013:

http://www.plantphysiol.org/content/157/2/947.full

http://www.plantcell.org/content/24/11/4452.full

The image shows an Arabidopsis mutant pollen (inp1) that lacks all three apertures. This mutant was identified in a large screen (first of the two references listed above) and the molecular basis of the loss of aperture was characterized in a subsequent study (second of the two references listed above). The mutant pollen lacks is viable even though it lacks apertures and this mutant convincinglty establishes that apertures are dispensable for successful pollen tube emergence.

Jennifer Mach of Plant Cell profiled the second paper in the "In Brief" section of the November 2012 issue of Plant Cell in which the article was published. The link to that report can be found here:

http://www.plantcell.org/content/24/11/4311.short

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------

Click here for previously featured image of the month.