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A pollen contains two sperm cells and it elongates pollen tube to carry sperm cells into the female gametophyte which contains an egg cell. After the arrival of pollen tube to the female gametophyte, it discharge two sperm cells into there. Sperm cells are delivered only 8 seconds from pollen tube discharge to the fertilization region where between the egg cell and central cell. Then, sperm cells stay there for 7 minutes. After that, sperm cells fertilize each partner cell. This fertilization system are called "double fertilization" especially for flowering plants. Our project has succeeded to image double fertilization process by using GFP and novel laser microscopy system.
Sperm cells movement during double fertilization were imaged by using two-photon laser microscopy and we constructed three dimensional images based on this observation. We observed that the sperm cell nucleus was directed toward the central cell nucleus indicating that the sperm cell nucleus entered the cytoplasm of the central cell, suggesting the completion of fertilization.
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