Dataset Information

Pollination triggers female gametophyte development in immature Nicotiana tabacum flowers.

ABSTRACT: In Nicotiana tabacum, female gametophytes are not fully developed at anthesis, but flower buds pollinated 12 h before anthesis produce mature embryo sacs. We investigated several pollination-associated parameters in N. tabacum flower buds to determine the developmental timing of important events in preparation for successful fertilization. First, we performed hand pollinations in flowers from stages 4 to 11 to study at which developmental stage pollination would produce fruits. A Peroxtesmo test was performed to correlate peroxidase activity on the stigma surface, indicative of stigma receptivity, with fruit set. Pollen tube growth and female gametophyte development were microscopically analyzed in pistils of different developmental stages. Fruits were obtained only after pollinations of flower buds at late stage 7 and older; fruit weight and seed germination capacity increased as the developmental stage of the pollinated flower approached anthesis. Despite positive peroxidase activity and pollen tube growth, pistils at stages 5 and 6 were unable to produce fruits. At late stage 7, female gametophytes were undergoing first mitotic division. After 24 h, female gametophytes of unpollinated pistils were still in the end of the first division, whereas those of pollinated pistils showed egg cells. RT-qPCR assay showed that the expression of the NtEC1 gene, a marker of egg cell development, is considerably higher in pollinated late stage 7 ovaries compared with unpollinated ovaries. To test whether ethylene is the signal eliciting female gametophyte maturation, the expression of ACC synthase was examined in unpollinated and pollinated stage 6 and late stage 7 stigmas/styles. Pollination induced NtACS expression in stage 6 pistils, which are unable to produce fruits. Our results show that pollination is a stimulus capable of triggering female gametophyte development in immature tobacco flowers and suggests the existence of a yet undefined signal sensed by the pistil.

SUBMITTER: Brito MS

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4510347 | biostudies-literature | 2015

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

ACCESS DATA

Publications

Pollination triggers female gametophyte development in immature Nicotiana tabacum flowers.

Brito Michael S MS Bertolino Lígia T LT Cossalter Viviane V Quiapim Andréa C AC DePaoli Henrique C HC Goldman Gustavo H GH Teixeira Simone P SP Goldman Maria H S MH

Frontiers in plant science 20150722

In Nicotiana tabacum, female gametophytes are not fully developed at anthesis, but flower buds pollinated 12 h before anthesis produce mature embryo sacs. We investigated several pollination-associated parameters in N. tabacum flower buds to determine the developmental timing of important events in preparation for successful fertilization. First, we performed hand pollinations in flowers from stages 4 to 11 to study at which developmental stage pollination would produce fruits. A Peroxtesmo test ...[more]

PMID: 26257764

Similar Datasets

Project description:Pollen, an extremely reduced bicellular or tricellular male reproductive structure of flowering plants, serves as a model for numerous studies covering wide range of developmental and physiological processes. The pollen development represents a fragile and vital phase of plant ontogenesis and pollen was among the first singular plant tissues thoroughly characterized at the transcriptomic level (Honys and Twell [5]). Arabidopsis pollen developmental transcriptome has been published over a decade ago (Honys and Twell, 2004) and transcriptomes of developing pollen of other species have followed (Rice, Deveshwar et al. [2]; Triticeae, Tran et al. [11]; upland cotton, Ma et al. [8]). However, the transcriptomic data describing the development of tobacco pollen, a bicellular model for cell biology studies, have been missing. Here we provide the transcriptomic data covering three stages (Tupý et al., 1983) of wild type tobacco (Nicotiana tabacum, cv. Samsun) pollen development: uninucleate microspores (UNM, stage 1), early bicellular pollen (eBCP, stage 3) and late bicellular pollen (lBCP, stage 5) as a supplement to the mature pollen (MP), 4 h-pollen tube (PT4), 24 h-pollen tubes (PT24), leaf (LF) and root (RT) transcriptomic data presented in our previous studies (Hafidh et al., 2012a; Hafidh et al., 2012b). We characterized these transcriptomes to refine the knowledge base of male gametophyte-enriched genes as well as genes expressed preferentially at the individual stages of pollen development. Alongside updating the list of tissue-specific genes, we have investigated differentially expressed genes with respect to early expressed genes. Pollen tube growth and competition of pollen tubes in female pistil can be viewed as a race of the fittest. Accordingly, there is an apparent evolutionary trend among higher plants to store significant material reserves and nutrients during pollen maturation. This supply ensures that after pollen germination, the pollen tube utilizes its resource predominantly for its rapid elongation in the female pistil. Previous transcriptomic data from Arabidopsis showed massive expression of genes encoding proteins forming both ribosomal subunits that were accumulated in developing pollen, whereas their expression was not detectable in growing pollen tubes (Honys and Twell, 2004). We observed a similar phenomenon in less advanced bicellular tobacco pollen. Here, we describe in detail how we obtained and analyzed validated microarray dataset deposited in Gene Expression Omnibus (GSE62349).

Dataset Information

Pollination triggers female gametophyte development in immature Nicotiana tabacum flowers.

Publications

Pollination triggers female gametophyte development in immature Nicotiana tabacum flowers.

Similar Datasets

OmicsDI is part of the ELIXIR infrastructure

Tweets