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How did Flowering Plants Learn to Avoid Blind Date Mistakes?

Self-Incompatibility in Plants and Comparisons with Nonself Rejection in the Immune Response

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Self and Nonself

Part of the book series: Advances in Experimental Medicine and Biology ((AEMB,volume 738))

Abstract

Self-incompatibility (SI) is a common form of genetically-controlled mate-selection that prevents mating between closely related plants of the same species. SI occurs in about half of all flowering plant species. It has been studied extensively in the Papaveraceae (poppy), Brassicaceae (Arabidopsis, cabbage etc), Solanaceae (potato, tomato etc), Plantaginaceae (snapdragon) and Rosaceae (apple, cherry and peach etc). The self-recognition inherent in self-incompatibility has similarities with animal and plant immunity systems giving rise to speculation that the systems are related. Both systems display balancing selection, ‘self/nonself’ recognition, high polymorphism, high specificity and there are also some similarities in the rejection mechanisms deployed in the two systems. Whether these systems have diverged from a common predecessor is discussed, however similarities may be driven more by biological problems and the available molecular machinery to solve them than by an evolutionary relationship.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Division of Biochemistry, University of Missouri, Columbia, Missouri, USA

    Philip J. Kear & Bruce McClure

  2. Germplasm Enhancement and Crop Improvement Division, International Potato Center, Lima, Peru

    Philip J. Kear

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  1. Philip J. Kear
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  2. Bruce McClure
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Correspondence to Philip J. Kear .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Immunology, Hospital Universitario Central de Asturias, Oviedo, Spain

    Carlos López-Larrea PhD

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Kear, P.J., McClure, B. (2012). How did Flowering Plants Learn to Avoid Blind Date Mistakes?. In: López-Larrea, C. (eds) Self and Nonself. Advances in Experimental Medicine and Biology, vol 738. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-1680-7_7

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