Gametophyte Sentence Examples

The gametophyte is a small thalloid structure which shows varying degrees of independence affording an interesting transition to the next group.

The male gametophyte is represented by one or few cells and, except in a few primitive forms where the male cell still retains the motile character as in the Pteridophyta, is carried passively to the macrospore in a development of the pollen grain, the pollen tube.

The gametophyte is unknown.

The independent plant which is generally attached to the soil by hair-like structures is the sexual generation, the sporophyte is a stalked or sessile capsule which remains always attached to the gametophyte from which it derives the whole or part of its nourishment.

The male gametophyte is sometimes represented by a transitory prothallial cell;, the two male cells are carried passively down into the ovary and into the mouth of the ovule by means of the pollen-tube.

The female gametophyte is extremely reduced; there is a sexual apparatus of naked cells, one of which is the egg-cell which, after fusion with a male cell, divides to form a large siispensorial cell and a terminal embryo.

In the vascular cryptogams and phanerogams it takes place in the spore mother cells and the reduced number is found in all the cells of the gametophyte, the full number in those of the sporophyte.

However, they belong respectively to two different forms in the life-history of the plants; the leaves of the mosses are borne by the gametophyte, those of the club-mosses by the sporophyte.

Thus in the series Bryophyta, Pteridophyta, Phanerogamia, whilst the sporophyte presents progressive development, the gametophyte presents continuous reduction.

The last-mentioned case has been regarded as representing an apogamous development of the sporophyte from the gametophyte comparable to the cases of apogamy described in Ferns.

As is well known, the dividing nuclei of the cells of the sporophyte generation of the higher plants exhibit a double number of chromosomes, while the dividing nuclei of the cells of the gametophyte generation exhibit the single number.

And since this rule has been found to hold good for all the archegoniate series and also for the flowering plants where, however, the gametophyte generation has become so extremely reduced as to be only with difficulty discerned, it is natural that when alternation of generation is stated to occur in any group of Thallophyta it should be required that the cytological evidence should support the view.

If the sporophyte generation is confined to the cystocarp, is the tetrasporiferous plant, as has been suggested, merely a potential gametophyte reproducing by a process analogous to the budformation of the Bryophyta?

Moreover, it is known that the reduction in the number of chromosomes which occurs at the initiation of the gametophyte generation in Pteridophyta occurs of the various constituent groups.

The complete life-history, with its regular alternation of gametophyte and sporophyte, is now known in all except a few rare genera of recent Pteridophyta, and will be described in connexion with the several groups.

On the formation of the spores a reduction to the number characteristic of the gametophyte takes place.

The modifications shown by the gametophyte of Lycopodium will be described below.

The main existing groups of the Filicaceae may now be briefly described, with special reference to the characters of gametophyte and sporophyte, which have been found of value in determining affinities.

The gametophyte in Hymenophyllum is flat and variously lobed; that of Trichomanes may be similar, but in other species is filamentous.

Besides this there is usually a living conducting tissue, sometimes differentiated as leptom, forming a mantle round the hydrom, and bounded externally by a more or less well-differentiated endodermis, abutting on an irregularly cylindrical lacuna; the latter separates the central conducting cylinder from the cortex of the seta, which, like the cortex of the gametophyte stem, is usually differentiated into an outer thick-walled stereom and an inner starchy parenchyma.

The gametophyte, which bears the sexual organs, is either a free-living thallus corresponding in degree of differentiation with the lower liverworts, or it is a mass of cells which always remains enclosed in a spore and is parasitic upon the sporophyte.

The body of the sporophyte in the great majority of the vascular plants shows a considerable increase in complexity over that found in the gametophyte of Bryophytes.

On the other hand, we have (2) an internal differentiation of conducting tissue, the main features of which as seen in the gametophyte of Bryophytes have already been fully described.

For instance, all the leaves of the Bryophyta are generally homologous inasmuch as they are all developments of the gametophyte.

There is thus in all the Basidiales an alternation of generations, obscured, however, by the apogamous transition from the gametophyte to sporophyte.

Although in the forms without aecidia the two generations are not sharply marked off from one another, we may look up the generation with single nuclei in the cells as the gametophyte and that with conjugate nuclei as the sporophyte.

The gametophyte or prothallial generation is thus extremely reduced, consisting of but little more than the male and female sexual cells - the two sperm-cells in the pollen-tube and the egg-cell (with the synergidae) in the embryo-sac. At the period of fertilization the embryo-sac lies in close proximity tube has penetrated, the separating cell-wall becomes absorbed, and the male or sperm-cells are ejected into the embryosac. Guided by the synergidae one male-cell passes into the oosphere with which it fuses, the two nuclei uniting, while the other fuses with the definitive nucleus, or, as it is also called, the endosperm nucleus.

From egg to spore-mother-cell is sporophyte; from spore-mother-cell to egg is gametophyte.

Upon the evidence it would seem therefore that so far as Nemalion is concerned an alternation occurs comparable with that existing in the lower Bryophyta where the sporophyte is relatively small, being attached to and to some extent parasitic upon the gametophyte.

It has been held by some, however, that the first brood corresponds to the sporophyte generation of the higher plants, and that the rest of the cycle is the gametophyte generation.

Blackman, who also succeeded in showing that the nuclei of the sporophyte generation contain twice as many chromosomes as the nuclei of the gametophyte.

The point common to all Pteridophyta is that from the first the gametophyte is an independent organism, while the sporophyte, though in the first stages of its development it obtains nutriment from the prothallus, becomes physiologically independent when its root develops.

Some of the more striking adaptive modifications in the gametophyte and sporophyte, and certain effects of altered external conditions which have been ascertained experimentally, may be briefly mentioned.

The series which can be constructed from a study of the sorus is in general supported by the anatomy of the sporophyte, and by the structure and sexual organs of the gametophyte.

Although the antithetic theory is supported by many facts regarding the lifehistory and structure of the group of plants under consideration, it is quite possible that a stage in which the sporophyte was wholly dependent on the gametophyte may never have been passed through in their evolution.

It has an alternation of generation reproductive style, with the gametophyte being the dominant generation.

These conditions allow the inconspicuous gametophyte (about the size of a finger nail) to develop and undergo fertilization.

One approach would be to engineer pollen lethality by taking advantage of promoters that are active specifically in the male gametophyte.

Both sexual and asexual reproduction occur, but there is usually no definite succession of the two modes, marking that alternation of sexual generation (gametophyte) and asexual generation (sporophyte) which characterizes the higher groups.

The Archegoniatae are characterized by a well-marked alternation of gametophyte and sporophyte generations; the former bears the sexual organs which are of characteristic structure and known as antheridia (male) and archegonia (female) respectively; the fertilized egg-cell on germination gives rise to the spore-bearing generation, and the spores on germination give rise directly or indirectly to a second gametophyte.

Sper,nelo phyla are characterized by an extreme reduction of the gametophyte generation.

Within the limits of the sporophyte generation the Pteridophytes and Phanerogams also differ from the Bryophytes in possessing special assimilative and transpiring organs, the leaves, though these organs are developed, as we have seen, in the gametophyte of many liverworts and of all the mosses.

In accordance with the prevalent antithetic view of the alternation of generations in these plants (see PLANTS, REPRODUCTION or), the forms distinguished as sporophyte and gametophyte are not homogenetic; consequently their leaves are not homologous, but are only functionally similar (homoplastic; see infra).

All but the lowest plants visibly tend towards or actually achieve in various degrees the differentiation of the body, whether sporophyte or gametophyte, into stem, leaf, root, &c., that is, the differentiation of parts not previously present.

In a fern-plant, for example, which is a sporophyte, every karyokinesis divulges the double number, while in the prothallium, which is the gametophyte generation, the single number appears.

In apospory the converse phenomenon is seen, the gametophyte springing vegetatively from the sporangium, receptacle of the sorus, or leaf-margin of the fern-plant.

In the Mosses the plant-body (gametophyte) is always separable into a radially organized, supporting and conducting axis (stem)

The matter is complicated by the apogamous transition from gametophyte to sporophyte in the absence of the ascogonium; also by the fact that there are normally two fusions in the life-history as mentioned earlier.