RT Journal Article
SR Electronic
T1 Feeling the force: how pollen tubes deal with obstacles
JF bioRxiv
FD Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory
SP 266106
DO 10.1101/266106
A1 Jan T. Burri
A1 Hannes Vogler
A1 Nino F. Läubli
A1 Chengzhi Hu
A1 Ueli Grossniklaus
A1 Bradley J. Nelson
YR 2018
UL http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2018/02/15/266106.abstract
AB Highlight Pollen tubes literally feel their way through their environment to avoid obstacles as they deliver male gametes to the ovule. We measured their force sensitivity to understand this remarkable behavior.Abstract Physical forces are involved in the regulation of plant development and morphogenesis by translating mechanical stress into the modification of physiological processes, which, in turn, can affect cellular growth. Pollen tubes are tip-growing cells that provide an ideal system to study processes induced by exposure to mechanical stress. We combined a lab-on-a-chip device with cellular force microscopy to mimic and quantify the forces that are involved in pollen tube navigation upon confronting mechanical obstacles. Several stages of obstacle avoidance were identified, including force perception, growth adjustment, and penetration. We have experimentally determined the perceptive force, which is the force threshold at which the pollen tube senses the obstacle, for Lilium longiflorum and Arabidopsis thaliana. In addition, we provide evidence that pollen tubes are capable of penetrating narrow gaps by increasing turgor pressure. Taken together, our data indicate that pollen tubes sense physical barriers and actively adjust their growth behavior to overcome them.