Research provides insight into plant cell division
From this unequal cell division, one cell works toward developing the top part of the plant including stem, leaves and flowers while the other works on root structure.
This image of a fertilized Arabidopsis egg cell shows the cell elongation with actin filaments in blue and nucleus in yellow. PHOTO: Yusuke Kimata and Yoko Mizuta, Nagoya University, Japan
Using a new live-cell imaging system, Tomokazu Kawashima with the UK College of Agriculture, Food and Environment, and his colleagues from Japan and Austria were able see how egg cells of Arabidopsis, a model plant used in research, lose their intercellular structure after fertilization and then reorganize.
“This paper provides the first insight into understanding how plants initiate embryo development at the cellular level, opening a new way of investigating sexual plant reproduction important for agriculture,” said Kawashima, an assistant professor in the UK Department of Plant and Soil Sciences.
The scientists identified two components within the cells, microtubules and actin filaments, which play a major role in cell structure and cell division. These components lose their structure at fertilization and then reorganize the cell to form an elongated shape with one smaller cell on top of a larger cell.
Researchers in Japan developed the live-cell imaging system. Kawashima played an important role in developing color markers for various components of the plant cell so scientists could fully see how those worked during and after fertilization.
Source: University of Kentucky