Institute of Plant and Microbial Biology, Academia Sinica, Taipei, Taiwan.
Plant Cell Physiol. 2011 Sep;52(9):1459-66. doi: 10.1093/pcp/pcr088. Epub 2011 Jul 9.
An anther includes sporophytic tissues of three outer cell layers and an innermost layer, the tapetum, which encloses a locule where the gametophytic microspores mature to become pollen. The sporophytic tissues also comprise some vascular cells and specialized cells of the stomium aligning the long anther axis for anther dehiscence. Studies of the anther sporophytic cells, especially the tapetum, have recently expanded from the use of microscopy to molecular biology and transcriptomes. The available sequencing technologies, plus the use of laser microdissection and in silico subtraction, have produced high-quality anther sporophyte transcriptomes of rice, Arabidopsis and maize. These transcriptomes have been used for research discoveries and have potential for future discoveries in diverse areas, including developmental gene activity networking and changes in enzyme and metabolic domains, prediction of protein functions by quantity, secretion, antisense transcript regulation, small RNAs and promoters for generating male sterility. We anticipate that these studies with rice and other transcriptomes will expand to encompass other plants, whose genomes will be sequenced soon, with ever-advancing sequencing technologies. In comprehensive gene activity profiling of the anther sporophyte, studies involving transcriptomes will spearhead investigation of the downstream gene activity with proteomics and metabolomics.
花药包含三个外层孢子组织和最内层的绒毡层，绒毡层包围着一个小室，其中的配子体小孢子成熟成为花粉。孢子组织还包括一些血管细胞和位于长花药轴上的气孔的特化细胞，这些细胞对齐有助于花药开裂。对花药孢子组织的研究，特别是绒毡层的研究，最近已经从显微镜技术扩展到了分子生物学和转录组学。现有的测序技术，加上激光显微切割和计算机减法技术，已经产生了高质量的水稻、拟南芥和玉米的花药孢子体转录组。这些转录组已被用于研究发现，并有可能在包括发育基因活性网络和酶及代谢区域变化、数量预测蛋白质功能、分泌、反义转录调控、小 RNA 和产生雄性不育的启动子等多个领域有未来的发现。我们预计，随着测序技术的不断进步，这些以水稻和其他转录组为基础的研究将扩展到包括其他植物，这些植物的基因组也将很快被测序。在花药孢子体的综合基因活性分析中，转录组研究将率先利用蛋白质组学和代谢组学研究下游基因的活性。
