ON THE COVER: The pollen development, which occurs in anther locule, is accurately regulated by interaction between microspore/pollen (haploid) and tapetum (diploid). For comprehensive understanding of pollen development, independent datasets of the microspore/pollen- and tapetum-transcriptomes are necessary. In this special “Plant Reproduction” issue, a series of four articles provided and/or used comprehensive data of gene expression in microspore/pollenand tapetum of rice (the cover photo shows anthesis of rice). These are the first reports of separated transcriptomes of microspore/pollen and tapetum, and were succeeded using laser microdissection (LM) technology. Suwabe et al. (pp. 1407–1416) and Hobo et al. (pp. 1417–1428) validated 44,000-LM-microarray (44K-LMM) data, and found specific gene expression patterns in anther development. Hirano et al. (pp. 1429–1450) applied the 44K-LMM data for analysis of the phytohormone synthesis and signaling. Mihara et al. (pp. 1451–1464) established a new algorism for identifying cis-regulatory elements of pollen-specific genes and a database for the 44K-LMM data.
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