The European Innovative Medicines Initiative: Progress to Date.

The Innovative Medicines Initiative is a public-private partnership between the European Union and the pharmaceuticals industry that was established in 2008, with an overall budget of €5.3 billion from 2008 until 2024. The objective of the initiative is to boost pharmaceutical innovation in Europe and speed up the development of innovative medicines, vaccines and medical technologies, in particular in areas with high unmet needs.

QUIRKY interacts with STRUBBELIG and PAL OF QUIRKY to regulate cell growth anisotropy during Arabidopsis gynoecium development.

Organ morphogenesis largely relies on cell division and elongation, which need to be both coordinated between cells and orchestrated with cytoskeleton dynamics. However, components that bridge the biological signals and the effectors that define cell shape remain poorly described. We have addressed this issue through the functional characterisation of QUIRKY (QKY), previously isolated as being involved in the STRUBBELIG (SUB) genetic pathway that controls cell-cell communication and organ morphogenesis in Arabidopsis.

DNA LIGASE I exerts a maternal effect on seed development in Arabidopsis thaliana.

Maternal effects are defined by mutations that affect the next generation when they are maternally inherited. To date, most indepth studies of maternal effects in plants have attributed their origin to genomic imprinting that restricts expression to the maternal allele. The DNA glycosylase DEMETER (DME) removes methylated cytosine residues, causing transcriptional activation of the maternal allele of imprinted genes.

Maternal control of male-gamete delivery in Arabidopsis involves a putative GPI-anchored protein encoded by the LORELEI gene.

In Angiosperms, the male gametes are delivered to the female gametes through the maternal reproductive tissue by the pollen tube. Upon arrival, the pollen tube releases the two sperm cells, permitting double fertilization to take place. Although the critical role of the female gametophyte in pollen tube reception has been demonstrated, the underlying mechanisms remain poorly understood.

A dialogue between the SIRENE pathway in synergids and the fertilization independent seed pathway in the central cell controls male gamete release during double fertilization in Arabidopsis.

Angiosperms sexual reproduction involves interactions between the two female gametes in the embryo sac and the two male gametes released by the pollen tube. The two synergids of the embryo sac express the FERONIA/SIRENE receptor-like kinase, which controls the discharge of the two sperm cells from the pollen tube. FER/SRN may respond to a ligand from the pollen tube.

European research infrastructures for the development of nanobiotechnologies.

Research infrastructures are essential for top-level academic and industrial research activities. Throughout the successive framework programmes (FPs) of the EU, actions have been gradually developed to support researchers in accessing top-level European research infrastructures located outside their own country and also to better coordinate and integrate these infrastructures Europe-wide, enabling better research services. At the same time, research infrastructures pave the way for the development of scientific and technological advances.

A novel class of MYB factors controls sperm-cell formation in plants.

In contrast to animals, the plant male germline is established after meiosis in distinctive haploid structures, termed pollen grains. The germline arises by a distinct asymmetric division of the meiotic products . The fates of the resulting vegetative and generative cells are distinct.

Identification of new members of Fertilisation Independent Seed Polycomb Group pathway involved in the control of seed development in Arabidopsis thaliana.

In higher plants, double fertilisation initiates seed development. One sperm cell fuses with the egg cell and gives rise to the embryo, the second sperm cell fuses with the central cell and gives rise to the endosperm. The endosperm develops as a syncytium with the gradual organisation of domains along an anteroposterior axis defined by the position of the embryo at the anterior pole and by the attachment to the placenta at the posterior pole.

Double fertilization in maize: the two male gametes from a pollen grain have the ability to fuse with egg cells.

In flowering plants, two male gametes from a single pollen grain fuse with two female gametes, the egg and central cells, to form the embryo and endosperm, respectively. The question then arises whether the two male gametes fuse randomly with the egg and central cells. We investigated this question using two nearly isogenic maize lines with supernumerary B chromosomes (TB10L18) or without (r-tester).

Female control of male gamete delivery during fertilization in Arabidopsis thaliana.

Fertilization in both animals and plants relies on the correct targeting of the male gametes to the female gametes. In flowering plants, the pollen tube carries two male gametes through the maternal reproductive tissues to the embryo sac, which contains two female gametes. The pollen tube then releases its two male gametes into a specialized receptor cell of the embryo sac, the synergid cell.

Fertilization in Arabidopsis thaliana wild type: developmental stages and time course.

We describe some previously uncharacterised stages of fertilization in Arabidopsis thaliana and provide for the first time a precise time course of the fertilization process. We hand-pollinated wild type pistils with wild type pollen (Columbia ecotype), fixed them at various times after pollination, and analysed 600 embryo sacs using Confocal Laser Scanning Microscopy. Degeneration of one of the synergid cells starts at 5 Hours After Pollination (HAP).