Pollen-tube tip growth requires a balance of lateral propagation and global inhibition of Rho-family GTPase activity.

ABSTRACT: Rapid tip growth allows for efficient development of highly elongated cells (e.g. neuronal axons, fungal hyphae and pollen tubes) and requires an elaborate spatiotemporal regulation of the growing region. Here, we use the pollen tube as a model to investigate the mechanism regulating the growing region. ROPs (Rho-related GTPases from plants) are essential for pollen tip growth and display oscillatory activity changes in the apical plasma membrane (PM). By manipulating the ROP activity level, we showed that the PM distribution of ROP activity as an apical cap determines the tip growth region and that efficient tip growth requires an optimum level of the apical ROP1 activity. Excessive ROP activation induced the enlargement of the tip growth region, causing growth depolarization and reduced

SUBMITTER: Hwang JU 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC2816183 | biostudies-literature | 2010 Feb

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature