Assistant Professor Purdue University West Lafayette, Indiana
The success of fertilization depends on the reciprocal recognition between membrane proteins or secreted peptides and their corresponding receptors on the surface of gametes. In Arabidopsis thaliana, male and female gametes express or secrete several molecular factors that mediate key specific cellular events. However, the interactions between these factors within and among complementary gametes remain largely unknown. Because Tetraspanins (TETs) function as cell-cell signaling hubs in various biological processes in eukaryotes, we investigated whether the Arabidopsis sperm-specific TET11 and TET12 could promote the formation of protein-protein interaction complexes to coordinate male-female gamete recognition, adhesion, and fusion. Our findings demonstrate that sperm TETs form functional signaling complexes in enriched microdomains at the sperm-sperm interface and co-localize with other fertilization factors regardless of their subcellular localization. We will report further work to explore the role of sperm TETs and TET-enriched domains in regulating the expression, stability, binding, or signaling activity of binding partners in a spatiotemporal manner in sperm cells and during male-female gamete interactions.