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Plant Germline Development pp 47–54Cite as

Live-Cell Imaging of F-Actin Dynamics During Fertilization in Arabidopsis thaliana

Part of the Methods in Molecular Biology book series (MIMB,volume 1669)

Abstract

Fertilization comprises a complex series of cellular processes leading to the fusion of a male and female gamete. Many studies have been carried out to investigate each step of fertilization in plants; however, our comprehensive understanding of all the sequential events during fertilization is still limited. This is largely due to difficulty in investigating events in the female gametophyte, which is deeply embedded in the maternal tissue. Recent advances in confocal microcopy assisted by fluorescent marker lines have contributed to visualizing subcellular dynamics in real time during fertilization in vivo. In this chapter, we describe a method focusing on the investigation of F-actin dynamics in the central cell during male gamete nuclear migration. This method also allows the study of a wide range of early sexual reproduction events, from pollen tube guidance to the early stage of seed development.

Key words

  • Arabidopsis
  • Fertilization
  • Gamete nuclear migration
  • F-actin
  • Confocal microscopy
  • Live-cell imaging

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  • DOI: 10.1007/978-1-4939-7286-9_4
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Acknowledgments

D.M. is supported by Toyoaki Scholarship Foundation and JSPS KAKENHI grant, number 15K14541 (Grant-in-Aid for Challenging Exploratory Research) and 16H06173 (Grant-in-Aid for Young Scientists).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Kihara Institute for Biological Research, Yokohama City University, 641-12 Maioka-cho, Totsuka-ku, Yokohama, Kanagawa, 244-0813, Japan

    Daichi Susaki & Daisuke Maruyama

  2. Gregor Mendel Institute (GMI), Austrian Academy of Sciences, Vienna Biocenter (VBC), Dr. Bohr-Gasse 3, 1030, Vienna, Austria

    Ramesh Yelagandula, Frederic Berger & Tomokazu Kawashima

  3. Department of Plant and Soil Sciences, University of Kentucky, 321 Plant Science Building, 1405 Veterans Dr., Lexington, KY, 40546, USA

    Tomokazu Kawashima

Authors
  1. Daichi Susaki
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  2. Daisuke Maruyama
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  3. Ramesh Yelagandula
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  4. Frederic Berger
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  5. Tomokazu Kawashima
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Tomokazu Kawashima .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Centre for Organismal Studies, University of Heidelberg, Heidelberg, Germany

    Dr. Anja Schmidt

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Susaki, D., Maruyama, D., Yelagandula, R., Berger, F., Kawashima, T. (2017). Live-Cell Imaging of F-Actin Dynamics During Fertilization in Arabidopsis thaliana . In: Schmidt, A. (eds) Plant Germline Development. Methods in Molecular Biology, vol 1669. Humana Press, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4939-7286-9_4

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4939-7286-9_4

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