physiological function |
T-DNA insertion lines of cell wall invertase 4 do not produce nectar. Overall nectary morphology appears to be normal, but mutant flowers accumulate higher than normal levels of starch in the receptacle, but not within the nectaries themselves. Conversely, wild-type, but not mutant, nectarial stomata stain intensely for starch. Cell wall extracts prepared from mutant flowers display greatly reduced invertase activity when compared with wild-type plants, and mutant flowers also accumulate significantly lower levels of total soluble sugar |
Arabidopsis thaliana |