Isolation and Transfection of Rice Egg Cells and Zygotes for Cellular Localization

Due to the difficulty in accessing to gametes and zygotes in flowering plants, which are controlled in single cells deeply embedded in multiple tissues, little is known about how the initiation of plant embryogenesis may reflect or contrast from such systems in other eukaryotes. In this study we has developed an approach of isolation and transfection of rice egg cells and zygotes for cellular localization of rice cell cycle factors (KRP5, KRP4 and FB3), which opened a pathway to monitor protein expression in rice egg cells and zygotes at different developmental stages. The advantageous feature of isolated rice cells may serve as an ideal system for studying the molecular mechanism underlying the rice zygotic division to initiate seed formation.