Pollen Transcriptome and Proteome: Molecular and Functional Analysis

The pollen grain, because of its unique structural organization, is an extremely useful experimental model in cytological, molecular as well as in genetic studies. Due to the ease of pollen grain isolation, their sorting as well as simple extraction of their DNA, RNA and proteins, male gametophyte cells of angiosperms are presently one of the most intensively studied plant cells. Important and rapid progress in the development of experimental tools for genome exploration caused a significant increase in the number of reports concerning different aspects of gene expression during microsporogenesis and microgametogenesis in angiosperm plants. In this review we present the current knowledge of the pollen transcriptome and proteome during different stages of male gametophyte development, especially in Arabidopsis thaliana. Most of the results presented here were obtained in experiments carried out using microarrays, which were designed on the basis of the known sequence of the Arabidopsis genome.