Dr. Mark Johnson’s lab at Brown University published a new research article on an Arabidopsis pollen tube mutant that fails to arrest its growth (pollen tube reception) in the synergid cell of the embryo sac (female gametophyte) and release the sperm cells to complete double fertilization. This is the first report on the male-specific defects…Continue Reading Lab News (August 2013)
Congratulations Jessica Franco and Salika Dunatunga! Jessica and Salika joined our lab as freshmen and have stayed here their entire time at the University of Arizona. Our best wishes and congratulations to both of them on successfully graduating today (5/11/13). Jessica graduated with a degree in Microbiology and Salika is a double major in Molecular…Continue Reading Lab News (May 2013)
Over the past decade, significant insights into the molecular and developmental regulation of pollen germination, growth, and guidance have been obtained. These developments warrants a comprehensive review of the entire pollen tube journey from stigma to double fertilization. Our lab has published a review article in the inagural edition of WIREs Developmental Biology. Reference: Palanivelu,…Continue Reading Lab News (July 2012)
While doing other experiments, we serendipitously observed that Arabidopsis pollen placed proximal to pistils always germinated well and sooner than those placed far away from pistils or when placed by themselves on a pollen growth medium. This observation led to additional experiments to characterize pollen germination stimulation by Arabidopsis pistils. This work is now published…Continue Reading Lab News (September 2011)
In collaboration with Dr. Yitshak Zohar’s lab, Department of Aeronautical and Mechanical Engineering, University of Arizona, we recently developed a microfluidic-based assay to monitor pollen tube growth and guidance in Arabidopsis. This work is now published as a research article. Reference: Yetisen, A.K., Jiang, L., Cooper, J.R., Qin, Y., Palanivelu, R*., and Zohar, Y*. (2011)….Continue Reading Lab News (May 2011)
Our lab will present two oral presentations in the upcoming ASPB 2010 and ICSPR research conferences. 1. On 08/03/2010, at 2:30pm Dr. Ravi Palanivelu will present an oral presentation in the pollen biology major symposium of ASPB 2010, Montreal, Canada. The title of his talk, “Primed for success: pistil signals potentiate pollen tubes prior to fertilization”….Continue Reading Lab News (July 2010)
Our lab performed a mutant screen to identify genes important for Arabidopsis reproduction. One such mutant contained a large number of undeveloped ovules and very few normal seeds. Thermal asymmetric interlaced polymerase chain reaction (TAIL-PCR) revealed that this mutant is a new allele of LRE (At4g26466). We characterized this mutant and this work has now been published…Continue Reading Lab News (April 2010)
Jessica Franco, a sophomore in our lab, was selected to receive an Exceptional Research Opportunities Program (EXROP) fellowship from Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) to do summer research. Jessica will be working this summer in Dr. Joseph L. DeRisi’s lab at the University of California in San Francisco (Lab website: http://derisilab.ucsf.edu/). From 147 nationwide applicants, Jessica…Continue Reading Lab News (March 2011)
In collaboration with Dr. Mark Johnson, Brown University, we wrote a peer-reviewed research article that identified for the first time the transcriptome of in vivo-grown pollen tubes. This work has now been published as a research article in PLoS Genetics. In addition, an illustration from this study (above) was used as the featured image (cover art)…Continue Reading Lab News (August 2009)
Along with Dr. Anja Geitmann at the University of Montreal, Canada, I wrote a peer-reviewed review article highlighting the various aspects of pollen tube guidance. Our goal for this article was to provide a comprehensive review of the knowledge gained so far in understanding how male and female cells communicate with each other to achieve…Continue Reading Lab News (January 2008)