Callose Deposition and Pollen Development

Callose is a polysaccharide in the form of β-1,3-glucan and it exists in the cell walls of a wide variety of higher plants. It plays important roles during a variety of processes in plant development.Callose deposition and its regulation has become research hotspots of plant biology. Timely deposition and degradation of callose are essential to normal growth and development of pollen. Abnormal callose deposition, excessive deposition or the lack of deposition will lead to pollen abortion, as well as early callose degradation or delayed degradation, then resulting in male sterility in plants. The callose degradation is regulated by callose synthase genes and β-1,3-glucanase genes directly and affected by many other related genes indirectly. However, there are a lot of genes' function during pollen development remains to be further identified. And the regulation pathway and concrete process are not clear in discovered genes. According to the latest research progress and results of callose deposition related to pollen development in recent years, we summarized the important influence processes of callose deposition on pollen development and discussed deeply the molecular regulation mechanism of callose deposition, which would provide some theoretical reference to regulation mechanism researches involved callose deposition in pollen development of flowering plants.