Flowering plants require three different nuclei in the pollen to travel and the sperm cell nuclei must travel through the pollen tube to reach the plant ovule.  Our collaboration with Yi Zhang’s group at Beijing Normal University is now available online with Nature Plants.  This work describes two kinesins that are involved in transporting the sperm nuclei in the pollen tube, providing insight into how plants ensure efficient fertilization without free-swimming sperm.

Yan, Y., Dai, L., Wang, B., Wang, T., Sun, Z., Wang, Y., Xing, C., Zhou, J., Luo, X., Zhu, Y., McFarlane, H.E., Gong, Y., Zhang, X., Xu, B., Hu, Y., Ren, H., and Zhang, Y. 2025. Kinesin proteins HUG1 and HUG2 are essential for the formation and transportation of male germ units in Arabidopsis pollen tubes. Nature Plants, 11: 1489-1499.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41477-025-02064-z

Microscopy is an essential tool for plant biologists, but new users may face many challenges when working with plant samples. A panel of experts from the Plant Cell Atlas, led by Imaging Committee co-chairs Dr. Kirk Czymmek at the Donald Danforth Plant Science Centre and Prof. Heather E. McFarlane at the University of Toronto, have put together a manual for best practices in plant fluorescence imaging and reporting. This paper offers guidance to new and intermediate microscope users with the goal of making published microscopy data better aligned with FAIR (findability, accessibility, interoperability, and reusability) principles.

Czymmek, K.J.#, Benitez-Alfonso, Y., Burch-Smith, T., Di Costanzo, L.F., Drakakaki, G., Facette, M., Kierzkowski, D., Klebanovych, A., Radin, I., Roychoudhry, S. and McFarlane, H.E.#, 2025. Best practices in plant fluorescence imaging and reporting: A primer. The Plant Cell, 37: koaf143.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1093/plcell/koaf143