CONICET | Buscador de Institutos y Recursos Humanos

To achieve fertilization, pollen tubes have to protect and properly deliver sperm cells through the pistil tothe ovules. Pollen tube growth is a representative example of polarized growth where new components ofthe cell wall and plasma membrane are continuously deposited at the tip of the growing cell. The integrity ofthe cell wall is of fundamental importance to maintain apical growth. For this reason, pollen tube growthhas become an excellent model to study the role of polysaccharides and structural cell wall proteins involvedin polar cell expansion. However, quantification of structural polysaccharides at the pollen tube cell wall hasbeen challenging due to technical complexity and the difficulty of finding specific dyes. Here, we proposesimple methods for imaging and quantification of callose, pectin, and cellulose using specific dyes such asAniline Blue, Propidium Iodide, and Pontamine Fast Scarlet 4B.