Abstract
Plastids of Oenothera, the evening primrose, can be transmitted to the progeny from both parents. In a constant nuclear background, the frequency of biparental plastid transmission is determined by the types of plastid genomes (plastomes) involved in the crosses. In this study, the impact of nuclear genomes on plastid inheritance was analyzed. In general, the transmission efficiency of each plastome correlated strongly with its compatibility with the nuclear genome of the progeny, suggesting that plastome-genome interactions can influence plastid transmission by affecting the efficiency of plastid multiplication after fertilization. Lower frequencies of plastid transmission from the paternal side were observed when the pollen had poor vigor due to an incompatible plastome-genome combination, indicating that plastome-genome interactions may also affect the input of plastids at fertilization. Parental traits that affect the process of fertilization can also have an impact on plastid transmission. Crosses using maternal parents with long styles or pollen with relatively low growth capacity resulted in reduced frequencies of paternal plastid transmission. These observations suggest that degeneration of pollen plastids may occur as the time interval between pollination and fertilization is lengthened.
Full Text
The Full Text of this article is available as a PDF (913.4 KB).
Selected References
These references are in PubMed. This may not be the complete list of references from this article.
- Mayfield S. P. Chloroplast gene regulation: interaction of the nuclear and chloroplast genomes in the expression of photosynthetic proteins. Curr Opin Cell Biol. 1990 Jun;2(3):509–513. doi: 10.1016/0955-0674(90)90135-2. [DOI] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
- Sugiura M. The chloroplast chromosomes in land plants. Annu Rev Cell Biol. 1989;5:51–70. doi: 10.1146/annurev.cb.05.110189.000411. [DOI] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]