bioRxiv preprint doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/279851; this version posted March 16, 2018. The copyright holder for this preprint (which was not certified by peer review) is the author/funder. All rights reserved. No reuse allowed without permission. Pollen Patterns Form from Modulated Phases Asja Radja1, Eric M. Horsley1, Maxim O. Lavrentovich2*, and Alison M. Sweeney1*
[email protected] [email protected] *
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[email protected] 1Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Pennsylvania, 209 S. 33rd St., Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19104, U.S.A. 2Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Tennessee, 1408 Circle Dr., Knoxville, Tennessee 37996, U.S.A *Co-corresponding authors 1 bioRxiv preprint doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/279851; this version posted March 16, 2018. The copyright holder for this preprint (which was not certified by peer review) is the author/funder. All rights reserved. No reuse allowed without permission. 1 Abstract 2 Pollen grains are known for their impressive variety of species-specific, microscale 3 surface patterning. Despite having similar biological developmental steps, pollen grain surface 4 features are remarkably geometrically varied. Previous work suggests that a physical process 5 may drive this pattern formation and that the observed diversity of patterns can be explained by 6 viewing pollen pattern development as a phase transition to a spatially modulated phase. Several 7 studies have shown that the polysaccharide material of plant cell walls undergoes phase 8 separation in the absence of cross-linking stabilizers of the mixed phase. Here we show 9 experimental evidence that phase separation of the extracellular polysaccharide material 10 (primexine) during pollen cell development leads to a spatially modulated phase.