Cover Illustration: The delayed initiation and slow elongation of fuzz-like short fibres correlate with altered patterns of sucrose synthase (Sus) expression and plasmodesmata (Pd) gating in a lintless mutant of cotton. The top and bottom images show that some fuzz-like short fibres develop from the seed of a lintless mutant (top) compared with wild-type seed characterized with abundant lint fibres (bottom) at maturity. The middle panels illustrate that Sus protein is immunologically undetectable in the seed epidermis of the mutant (upper left), but is evident in the lint fibres of the wild type (upper right) at 5 d after anthesis. Symplastic fluorescent dye, CF, moves into the short fibres of the mutant (middle panel, lower left), but is unable to move into the lint fibres from the seed coat of the wild type (lower right) at 12 d after initiation, indicating that the fibre Pd is open in the mutant, but closed in the wild-type seed. (See Ruan et al., 977-984.)
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