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Science 3 August 2007:
Vol. 317. no. 5838, pp. 656 - 660
DOI: 10.1126/science.1143562
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Reports

The FERONIA Receptor-like Kinase Mediates Male-Female Interactions During Pollen Tube Reception

Juan-Miguel Escobar-Restrepo,1 Norbert Huck,1 Sharon Kessler,1 Valeria Gagliardini,1 Jacqueline Gheyselinck,1 Wei-Cai Yang,2 Ueli Grossniklaus1*

In flowering plants, signaling between the male pollen tube and the synergid cells of the female gametophyte is required for fertilization. In the Arabidopsis thaliana mutant feronia (fer), fertilization is impaired; the pollen tube fails to arrest and thus continues to grow inside the female gametophyte. FER encodes a synergid-expressed, plasma membrane–localized receptor-like kinase. We found that the FER protein accumulates asymmetrically in the synergid membrane at the filiform apparatus. Interspecific crosses using pollen from Arabidopsis lyrata and Cardamine flexuosa on A. thaliana stigmas resulted in a fer-like phenotype that correlates with sequence divergence in the extracellular domain of FER. Our findings show that the female control of pollen tube reception is based on a FER-dependent signaling pathway, which may play a role in reproductive isolation barriers.

1 Institute of Plant Biology and Zürich-Basel Plant Science Center, University of Zürich, Zollikerstrasse 107, CH-8008 Zürich, Switzerland.
2 Key Laboratory of Molecular and Developmental Biology, Institute of Genetics and Developmental Biology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100101, China.

* To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: grossnik{at}botinst.uzh.ch

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Science. ISSN 0036-8075 (print), 1095-9203 (online)