Pollen Tubes: An Excellent Model
Pollen tubes are an excellent model for the understanding of plant cell behavior. They are easily cultivated in vitro and have a very dynamic cytoskeleton that polymerizes at very high rates, providing the pollen tube with interesting mechanical properties. The pollen tube has an unusual kind of growth; it extends exclusively at its apex. Extending the cell wall only at the tip minimizes friction between the tube and the invaded tissue. This tip growth is performed in a pulsating manner rather than in a steady fashion. Remarkably, the pollen tube’s journey through the style often results in depth-to-diameter ratios above 100:1 and up to 1000:1 in certain species, whereas classic mechanical drilling is often only effective up to 15:1 ratios. However, the internal machinery and the external interactions that govern the dynamics of pollen tube growth are far from being fully understood.
Read more about this topic: Pollen Tube
Famous quotes containing the words pollen, excellent and/or model:
“Books are the bees which carry the quickening pollen from one to another mind.”
—James Russell Lowell (1819–1891)
“It has been my fate in a long life of production to be credited chiefly with the equivocal virtue of industry, a quality so excellent in morals, so little satisfactory in art.”
—Margaret Oliphant (1828–1897)
“If the man who paints only the tree, or flower, or other surface he sees before him were an artist, the king of artists would be the photographer. It is for the artist to do something beyond this: in portrait painting to put on canvas something more than the face the model wears for that one day; to paint the man, in short, as well as his features.”
—James Mcneill Whistler (1834–1903)