Genes dominantly expressed in germinating pollen

In sexual reproduction, a proper communication and cooperation between male and female organs and tissue are essential for male and female gametes to unite. In flowering plants, female sporophytic tissues and gametophyte direct a male pollen tube towards an egg apparatus, which consists of an egg cell and two synergid cells. The cell-cell communication between the pollen tube and the egg apparatus, such as the reception of a signal from the egg apparatus at the pollen tube, makes the tip of pollen tube rapture to release the sperm cell. To isolate male factors involved in the interaction between a pollen tube and an egg apparatus, we focused on receptor-like kinases (RLKs), which are extensively diversified in the flowering plant lineage to comprise a large monophyletic gene family. Approximately 620 members were found in the Arabidopsis thaliana genome. Expression patterns of 558 RLKs were analyzed using an Affymetrix ATH1 microarray of A. thaliana. We focused on two RLKs, ANXUR1 (ANX1) and ANXUR2 (ANX2), and characterized their function. Here we report that pollen tubes of anx1/anx2 ruptured before arriving at the egg apparatus, suggesting that ANX1 and ANX2 are male factors controlling pollen tube behavior with directing rupture at proper timing. Furthermore, ANX1 and ANX2 were the most closely related paralogs to a female factor FERONIA/SIRENE controlling pollen tube behavior expressed in synergid cells. Our finding shows that the coordinated behaviors of female and male reproductive apparatuses are regulated by the sister genes, whose duplication might play a role in the evolution of fertilization system in flowering plants.

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Miyazaki S, Murata T, Sakurai-Ozato N, Kubo M, Demura T, Fukuda H, Hasebe M