CSB Seminar – Professor Alice Cheung, UMass-Amherst

Plant sperm are immobile and are transported as cytoplasmic cargoes of the pollen tube to the female gametophyte whereupon the pollen tube undergoes a violent cytoplasmic eruption, releasing and rendering them available for fertilization. Under normal conditions, only a single pollen tube enters a female gametophyte, precluding polyspermy.  FERONIA receptor kinase plays a critical role in these two processes.   Loss of function feronia mutants are severely female deficient and their female gametophytes fail to induce pollen tube rupture, allow supernumerary pollen tube penetration but fail in fertilization. I will discuss results demonstrating how FERONIA mediates these two intimate but independently regulated processes.