Adhesion and Guidance in Pollination

授粉中的坚持和指导这个项目是关于植物繁殖的。植物通过受精(精子和卵子融合形成受精卵，然后形成胚胎)产生种子。开花植物产生了我们所有的农作物，包括食物和纤维，它们具有复杂的生殖机制，包括附着和引导花的雌性组织(雌蕊)中的携带精子的结构，即花粉管。人们对生殖的这一阶段知之甚少，因为为了将精子送到位于卵巢深处的卵子，必须穿过雌蕊中的许多引导柱。最近，在复活节百合的雌蕊入口处发现了一种蛋白质，它能够将正在生长的花粉管顶端引导到正确的轨道上，到达子房的卵细胞。它与另一种蛋白质作用，该蛋白质参与花柱中花粉管的黏附和引导，即进入子房。了解雌蕊中的这些蛋白质如何与花粉管相互作用，引导其生长到卵子是本次调查的重点。这是在植物中发现的第一个这样的趋化肽(小蛋白)。令人惊讶的是，人类生殖轨迹中引导精子细胞进入卵子的类似化学吸引剂仍不清楚，但在一种脊椎动物物种青蛙中，精子化学吸引剂的身份是已知的，而且它也是一种小蛋白质。生物化学(利用百合)、分子遗传学(利用拟南芥)和定位研究将被用来研究这种相互作用，从而更好地了解开花植物受精。这一结果将对农作物和花卉产业的育种计划具有重要意义。

Lord 0420445Adhesion and Guidance in PollinationThis project concerns plant reproduction. Plants produce seed by fertilization (the fusion of sperm and egg to form a zygote and then an embryo). Flowering plants, which produce all our crops, both food and fiber, have complex reproductive mechanisms which involve adhesion and guidance of the sperm carrying structure, the pollen tube, in the female tissues (pistil) of the flower. Little is known about this phase of reproduction when many guide posts must be traversed in the pistil in order for the sperm cells to be delivered to the egg which resides deep inside the ovary. Recently, a protein has been discovered at the entrance to the pistil in the Easter Lily, which is capable of directing the growing pollen tube tip onto the proper track to the egg cell in the ovary. It acts with another protein that is involved in adhesion and guidance of the pollen tube in the style, the entrance into the ovary. Understanding how these proteins from the pistil interact with the pollen tube to guide its growth to the egg is the focus of this investigation. This is the first such chemotropic peptide (small protein) discovered in plants. Surprisingly, the analogous chemo-attractants in the human reproductive track that guide sperm cells to the egg remain unknown, but in one vertebrate species, the frog, the identity of the sperm chemo-attractant is known and it is also a small protein. Biochemical (using Lily), molecular genetic(using Arabidopsis) and localization studies will be used to study this interaction and thereby gain a better understanding of flowering plant fertilization. The results will be of importance to breeding programs for both crop plants and for the flower industry.