Dr. Taiyo Toriba

A stamen is a male reproductive organ producing pollen grains in flowers. Most angiosperms have linear stamens, each of which consists of an apical part, anther, and a long and narrow basal part, filament as Arabidopsis does. On the other hand, some angiosperms have laminar stamens. The ultimate aim of our research is to understand molecular mechanisms that regulate these stamen shapes.

Although there are apparent exceptional cases, for example, laminar stamens, the basic structure of the stamen is an anther and a filament. Because we do not know how this basic patterning is established even in Arabidopsis stamens, our current research is focusing on mechanisms underlying the stamen patterning. To elucidate the mechanisms, mutants of Arabidopsis are being analyzed. We so far found that ectopic expression of a MADS box gene caused a partial transformation of petals into stamens. Further analyses of the MADS box gene in stamen development are ongoing.