Sperm cells are passive cargo of the pollen tube in plant fertilization

Sperm cells of seed plants have lost their motility and are transported by the vegetative pollen tube cell for fertilization. The extent to which sperm cells regulate their own transportation is a long-standing debate. By using the novel Arabidopsis double mutant drop1 drop2, we demonstrate here that sperm cells are only passive cargo and that the vegetative tube cell as a vehicle controls the entire journey. Overall design: the semi-in-vivo pollen tubes of wild type (WT) and drop mutant using single-cell RNA sequencing

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Zhang J, Huang Q, Zhong S, Bleckmann A, Huang J, Guo X, Lin Q, Gu H, Dong J, Dresselhaus T, Qu LJ