Abstract
Flowers are unique in unusually high level of certain lipids, such as phosphatidic acid (PA) and phosphoinositides, which play critical roles in plant signal transduction. The importance of lipids in flower development is further suggested by a plenty of examples in which knock-out of lipid-related genes shows abnormal phenotypes in flower development or reproductive processes. In Arabidopsis, however, lipid metabolism in flowers is largely unknown mainly because flowers are too tiny to harvest in bulk according to the developmental stages. To explore the function of lipids in Arabidopsis reproductive process, we performed developmental stage-specific glycerolipid profiling together with expression profiling on lipid biosynthetic genes using a system to synchronize flower development. The results revealed dramatic changes in lipid composition and expression of relevant genes. This comprehensive dataset provides a new platform to investigate function of lipids during plant reproductive processes.
