What we have learned from transcript profile analyses of male and female gametes in flowering plants

摘要

Double fertilization is one of the predominant features of sexual reproduction in flowering plants but, because of the physical inaccessibility of gametes, the essential molecular mechanisms in these processes are largely unknown. Based on the techniques for isolating highly purified gametes from several species and well-developed methods for manipulating RNA from limited quantities of gametes, genome-wide investigations of gamete transcription profiles were recently conducted in flowering plants. In this review, we survey the accumulated knowledge on gamete collection and purification, cDNA library construction, and transcript profile analysis to assess our understanding of the molecular mechanisms of gamete specialization and fertilization.