Rolling pollen - A fluorescence microscopy image of a mature pollen grain from a transgenic Arabidopsis line expressing GFP-tagged CenH3, the centromere-specific histone H3 variant, under the control of its own promoter and RFP-tagged histone H2B driven by a vegetative cell nucleus-specific promoter. Pollen has a unique „cells within a cell“ structure: the vegetative cell contains two sperm cells. CenH3-GFP decorates five centromeric foci in the sperm cell nuclei, but not in the vegetative cell nucleus, in which centromeric heterochromatin has undergone decondensation, whereas H2B-RFP is expressed preferentially in the vegetative cell nucleus.

The same image was duplicated and rotated at an angle of 45°. This picture was captured by Nina Chumak, a Ph.D. student in the laboratory of Dr. H. Tamaru at the Gregor Mendel Institute of Molecular Plant Biology.

 

Ein fluoreszierendes Mikroskopiebild von einem Pollenkorn einer transgenen Arabidopsis-Linie, die den GFP-makierten CenH3 wiedergibt, eine Variante des zentromer-spezifischen Histons H3, unter der Kontrolle ihres eigenen Promotors und des RFP-markierten Histons H2B, angetrieben von einem vegetativen nukleus-spezifischen Zellpromotor.