Live Imaging of Double Fertilization
Abstract: During double fertilization, a unique reproductive strategy in angiosperms, two sperm cells fuse with two distinct female partners, an egg cell and a central cell. The fusion products develop into an embryo and its nutritious tissue, an endosperm, respectively. The difficulty in observing double fertilization process hampers progress of double fertilization research. Recent breakthrough in microscopy techniques to observe living cells and cell manipulation techniques, such as inducible gene expression and laser disruption of specific cells, began to reveal the mechanism of double fertilization in Arabidopsis thaliana. Here, we review current discoveries about the dynamics of double fertilization process and also discuss future views on plant reproduction research based on live imaging techniques.
Key words: Double fertilization, live imaging, cell manipulation, Arabidopsis thaliana