July 11, 2018
Postdoctoral Researcher, Federico Roda (Hopkins Lab) investigated the mechanistic link between a plants ability to reject its own pollen and to reject pollen from another species. By performing over 5000 controlled crosses in a group of native Texas wildflowers, Roda and Prof. Hopkins found these two types of pollen rejection systems were highly correlated across individuals and occurred at the same time during pollen development. The study published in New Phytologist, concludes that these incompatibilities share an underlying mechanism and this shared mechanism influences the evolution of pollen rejection within a species.