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SEED DEVELOPMENT

A parental tug-of-war

Seeds are products of successful fertilization involving the merging of maternal and paternal gametes. Interspecific pollination can often produce viable seeds but, on germination, these unwanted offspring are generally rejected by an epigenetic barrier, mediated by the endosperm.

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Fig. 1: Tug-of-war over the timing of developmental transitions.

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Correspondence to Tetsu Kinoshita.

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Kinoshita, T. A parental tug-of-war. Nature Plants 4, 329–330 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41477-018-0179-9

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