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Plant biology

LURE is bait for multiple receptors

Nature volume 531, pages 178–180 (2016)Cite this article

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In flowering plants, sperm-containing pollen tubes are guided towards ovules by attractants from the female reproductive organ. Receptors for the attractant molecule AtLURE1 have now been found. See Letters p.241 & p.245

It is well established that pollen-specific receptor-like kinase (RLK) proteins can regulate the growth of pollen tubes6. These proteins typically have three domains: an ectodomain that interacts with extracellular signal molecules; a membrane-spanning domain; and a cytoplasmic domain that attaches phosphate groups to target molecules, inducing cellular responses to incoming signals (Fig. 1b). Using different genetic strategies and starting from an overlapping list of almost 30 pollen-expressed RLKs, the two groups searched for proteins that support ovule targeting by pollen tubes.

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Figure 1: Long journey for pollen grains.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Alice Y. Cheung and Hen-Ming Wu are in the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, Massachusetts 01003, USA.,

    Alice Y. Cheung & Hen-Ming Wu

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  1. Alice Y. Cheung
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  2. Hen-Ming Wu
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Correspondence to Alice Y. Cheung or Hen-Ming Wu.

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Cheung, A., Wu, HM. LURE is bait for multiple receptors. Nature 531, 178–180 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1038/531178a

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