Using a combination of electron-microscopic and immunocytochemical techniques the behaviour of the microtubular cytoskeleton has been followed throughout microsporogenesis inLilium henryiThunb. Cells treated with colchicine at specific stages and then permitted to develop to near maturity were used to investigate any participation by microtubules in the regulation of pollen wall patterning. The microtubular cytoskeleton assumes four principal forms during the meiotic process; in pre-meiosis it resembles that characteristic of meristematic somatic cells, during meiotic prophase it becomes associated with a nuclear envelope and, perhaps, with the chromosomes and, as the nuclear and cell divisions commence, it takes the form of a normal spindle apparatus. In the young microspores, microtubules assume a radial organisation extending from sites at the nuclear envelope to the inner face of the plasma membrane. No firm evidence was found linking any one of these forms of cytoskeleton with the generation of patterning on the cell surface. Experiments with colchicine revealed that the drug would readily dislocate the colpus, but did not affect the general reticulate patterning. The radial cytoskeleton was present during the deposition of the early primexine, but evidence from these and other studies (J.M. Sheldon and H.G. Dickinson 1983, J. Cell. Sci.63, 191–208; H.G. Dickinson and J.M. Sheldon, 1984, Planta161, 86–90) indicates patterning to be imprinted upon the plasma membrane prior to the appearance of this type of cytoskeleton. These results are discussed in terms of a recent model proposed to explain pattern generation on the surface ofLiliumpollen grains, based on the “self-assembly” of patterning determinants within the plasma m
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