MU Researchers Listen in as Female, Male Plants “Talk”

First posted on 10-27-2008

It can be very difficult for humans to choose just the right person with which to share life and raise a family. But can you imagine how much tougher that whole process is for a plant? Missouri University scientists did and they came up with some interesting ways that plants communicate interest without using the visual and audio communications we humans do.

Bruce McClure, a researcher at MU’s Interdisciplinary Plant Group and Division of Biochemistry, worked with a team of colleagues to identify pollen proteins that plants use at a molecular level to identify suitable mates while avoiding cross pollination with less desirable suitors.

Since plants do not have the ability to move about freely, they have to rely on the wind or animals to bring pollen to them so they can strike up a conversation, so to speak. That communications is accomplished when the pollen grains, which are the male portion of a flower, converses on a molecular level with the female part of the plant, known as the pistil.

“Unlike an animal’s visual cues about mate selection, a plant’s mate recognition takes place on a molecular level,” McClure said. “The pollen must, in some way, announce to the pistil its identity, and the pistil must interpret this identity. To do this, proteins from the pollen and proteins from the pistil interact; this determines the acceptance or rejection of individual pollen grains.”

McClure and his team used two specific pistil proteins as a bait of sorts to determine what pollen proteins would bind to them. “Our experiment was like putting one side of a Velcro strip on two pistil proteins and then screening a collection of pollen proteins to see which of the pollen proteins have the complementary Velcro strip for binding,” McClure said. “If it sticks, it’s a good indication that the pollen proteins work with the pistil proteins to determine the success of reproduction.”

Being able to eavesdrop on these kinds of plant communications could allow researchers to find better ways to control fertilization between species and more efficiently enable plant growth.