Sperm cells are passive cargo of the pollen tube in plant fertilization.
Jun Zhang, Qingpei Huang, Sheng Zhong, Andrea Bleckmann, Jiaying Huang, Xinyang Guo, Qing Lin, Hongya Gu, Juan Dong, Thomas Dresselhaus, Li-Jia Qu
Author Information
Jun Zhang: State Key Laboratory for Protein and Plant Gene Research, Peking-Tsinghua Center for Life Sciences at College of Life Sciences, Peking University, Beijing 100871, China.
Qingpei Huang: State Key Laboratory for Protein and Plant Gene Research, Peking-Tsinghua Center for Life Sciences at College of Life Sciences, Peking University, Beijing 100871, China.
Sheng Zhong: State Key Laboratory for Protein and Plant Gene Research, Peking-Tsinghua Center for Life Sciences at College of Life Sciences, Peking University, Beijing 100871, China.
Andrea Bleckmann: Cell Biology and Plant Biochemistry, Biochemie-Zentrum Regensburg, University of Regensburg, 93053 Regensburg, Germany.
Jiaying Huang: State Key Laboratory for Protein and Plant Gene Research, Peking-Tsinghua Center for Life Sciences at College of Life Sciences, Peking University, Beijing 100871, China.
Xinyang Guo: State Key Laboratory for Protein and Plant Gene Research, Peking-Tsinghua Center for Life Sciences at College of Life Sciences, Peking University, Beijing 100871, China.
Qing Lin: State Key Laboratory for Protein and Plant Gene Research, Peking-Tsinghua Center for Life Sciences at College of Life Sciences, Peking University, Beijing 100871, China.
Hongya Gu: State Key Laboratory for Protein and Plant Gene Research, Peking-Tsinghua Center for Life Sciences at College of Life Sciences, Peking University, Beijing 100871, China.
Juan Dong: The Waksman Institute of Microbiology, Rutgers the State University of New Jersey, Piscataway, New Jersey 08854, USA.
Thomas Dresselhaus: Cell Biology and Plant Biochemistry, Biochemie-Zentrum Regensburg, University of Regensburg, 93053 Regensburg, Germany.
Li-Jia Qu: State Key Laboratory for Protein and Plant Gene Research, Peking-Tsinghua Center for Life Sciences at College of Life Sciences, Peking University, Beijing 100871, China.
Sperm cells of seed plants have lost their motility and are transported by the vegetative pollen tube cell for fertilization, but the extent to which they regulate their own transportation is a long-standing debate. Here we show that Arabidopsis lacking two bHLH transcription factors produces pollen without sperm cells. This abnormal pollen mostly behaves like the wild type and demonstrates that sperm cells are dispensable for normal pollen tube development.
