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The Central Cell Plays a Critical Role in Pollen Tube Guidance in Arabidopsis^[W]

^a Key Laboratory of Molecular and Developmental Biology, Institute of Genetics and Developmental Biology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100101, China
^b Graduate University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100039, China
^c Temasek Life Sciences Laboratory, Singapore 117604
^d Institute of Plant Biology and Zürich-Basel Plant Science Center, University of Zurich, CH-8008 Zurich, Switzerland
^e Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, Cold Spring Harbor, New York 11724

¹ Address correspondence to wcyang{at}genetics.ac.cn.

The sperm cell of flowering plants cannot migrate unaided and must be transported by the pollen tube cell of the male gametophyte to achieve successful fertilization. Long-distance pollen tube guidance is controlled by the seven-celled female gametophyte, the embryo sac. Previous reports showed that the synergid cell of the embryo sac is essential for pollen tube guidance. Here, we report the identification of a central cell guidance (ccg) mutant, which is defective in micropylar pollen tube guidance. CCG encodes a nuclear protein with an N-terminal conserved zinc β-ribbon domain that is functionally interchangeable with that of TFIIB in yeast. This suggests that CCG might act as a transcription regulator for pollen tube guidance. CCG is expressed in the central cell of the female gametophyte. Expression of CCG in the central cell alone is sufficient to restore the normal pollen tube guidance phenotype, demonstrating that the central cell plays a critical role in pollen tube guidance.

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