Journal of Cell Science, Vol 12, 403-419, Copyright © 1973 by Company of Biologists

Submitted on May 29, 1972

Ultrastructural Aspects of the Self-Incompatibility Mechanism in Lycopersicum Peruvianum Mill

¹ Laboratorio Applicazioni Agricoltura del C.N.E.N. C.S.N. Casaccia, Roma, Italy
² Laboratory of Electron Microscopy, Istituto di Botanica dell'Università di Siena, Italy

The experimental results obtained show that the tip of the incompatible pollen tube bursts open after the outer-wall has considerably expanded in the intercellular spaces of the conducting tissue and the inner-wall has disappeared and numerous particles have accumulated in the tube cytoplasm. These particles, which measure approximately 0.2 µm in diameter and give a weak reaction to the test of Thiéry, differ in many respects from the vesicles normally present in compatible pollen tubes growing through the style; they appear to resemble, in some cases, the spheres which are discharged by the compatible pollen tubes after they have reached the embryo-sac.

It is considered that these observations support the current belief that the tube wall is the site of action for the incompatibility proteins and suggest that self-incompatibility is not a passive process resulting from lack of growth stimulation but an active event which leads to the destruction of the incompatible pollen tubes. The degradation mechanism involved appears similar to the one which enables the compatible pollen tube to release its contents in the degenerated synergid and presents some analogies with the lytic process taking place in virus-infected cells.

The general hypothesis is presented that the particles observed in the cytoplasm of self-incompatible pollen tubes consist of a mixture of incompatibility proteins and of basic constituents of the tube wall.