Sexual plant reproduction: Male and female talk in the same way as do cells in your brain
Thursday, March 17, 2011 - 14:00
in Biology & Nature
A team of researchers at the Instituto Gulbenkian de Ciencia (IGC), Portugal, discovered that pollen, the organ that contains the plant male gametes, communicate with the pistil, their female counterpart, using a mechanism commonly observed in the nervous system of animals. This study not only reveals a new mechanism which underlies reproduction in plants, but also opens an exciting new avenue in the study of how cell-cell communication is conserved between animals and plants. The research is to be published this week in Science Express.