Skip Navigation


JXB Advance Access originally published online on February 27, 2008
Journal of Experimental Botany 2008 59(4):861-873; doi:10.1093/jxb/ern007
This Article
Right arrow Full Text Freely available
Right arrow FREE Full Text (PDF) Freely available
Right arrow Supplementary Material
Right arrowOA All Versions of this Article:
59/4/861    most recent
ern007v1
Right arrow E-letters: Submit a response
Right arrow Alert me when this article is cited
Right arrow Alert me when E-letters are posted
Right arrow Alert me if a correction is posted
Services
Right arrow Email this article to a friend
Right arrow Similar articles in this journal
Right arrow Similar articles in ISI Web of Science
Right arrow Similar articles in PubMed
Right arrow Alert me to new issues of the journal
Right arrow Add to My Personal Archive
Right arrow Download to citation manager
Right arrow Disclaimer
Google Scholar
Right arrow Articles by Zonia, L.
Right arrow Articles by Munnik, T.
PubMed
Right arrow PubMed Citation
Right arrow Articles by Zonia, L.
Right arrow Articles by Munnik, T.
Agricola
Right arrow Articles by Zonia, L.
Right arrow Articles by Munnik, T.
Social Bookmarking
Add to CiteULike   Add to Connotea   Add to Del.icio.us  
What's this?

© 2008 The Author(s).
This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/2.0/uk/) which permits unrestricted non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. This paper is available online free of all access charges (see http://jxb.oxfordjournals.org/open_access.html for further details)

RESEARCH PAPER

Vesicle trafficking dynamics and visualization of zones of exocytosis and endocytosis in tobacco pollen tubes

Laura Zonia* and Teun Munnik

University of Amsterdam, Swammerdam Institute for Life Sciences, Section Plant Physiology Kruislaan 318, 1098 SM Amsterdam, Netherlands

* To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: zonia{at}science.uva.nl

Pollen tubes are one of the fastest growing eukaryotic cells. Rapid anisotropic growth is supported by highly active exocytosis and endocytosis at the plasma membrane, but the subcellular localization of these sites is unknown. To understand molecular processes involved in pollen tube growth, it is crucial to identify the sites of vesicle localization and trafficking. This report presents novel strategies to identify exocytic and endocytic vesicles and to visualize vesicle trafficking dynamics, using pulse-chase labelling with styryl FM dyes and refraction-free high-resolution time-lapse differential interference contrast microscopy. These experiments reveal that the apex is the site of endocytosis and membrane retrieval, while exocytosis occurs in the zone adjacent to the apical dome. Larger vesicles are internalized along the distal pollen tube. Discretely sized vesicles that differentially incorporate FM dyes accumulate in the apical, subapical, and distal regions. Previous work established that pollen tube growth is strongly correlated with hydrodynamic flux and cell volume status. In this report, it is shown that hydrodynamic flux can selectively increase exocytosis or endocytosis. Hypotonic treatment and cell swelling stimulated exocytosis and attenuated endocytosis, while hypertonic treatment and cell shrinking stimulated endocytosis and inhibited exocytosis. Manipulation of pollen tube apical volume and membrane remodelling enabled fine-mapping of plasma membrane dynamics and defined the boundary of the growth zone, which results from the orchestrated action of endocytosis at the apex and along the distal tube and exocytosis in the subapical region. This report provides crucial spatial and temporal details of vesicle trafficking and anisotropic growth.

Key words: Endocytosis; exocytosis, hydrodynamics, lipophilic FM dyes, pollen tube growth, vesicle trafficking

Received 14 September 2007; Revised 23 November 2007 Accepted 7 January 2008


Add to CiteULike CiteULike   Add to Connotea Connotea   Add to Del.icio.us Del.icio.us    What's this?




Disclaimer:
Please note that abstracts for content published before 1996 were created through digital scanning and may therefore not exactly replicate the text of the original print issues. All efforts have been made to ensure accuracy, but the Publisher will not be held responsible for any remaining inaccuracies. If you require any further clarification, please contact our Customer Services Department.