Factors Involved in Pollen Germination Playing a Critical Role also in Allergic Sensitization

Pollen is a useful system for the studies of tip growth and cell wall deposition. For this reason, it was chosen as a promising model for studying how external stimuli are integrated within the cell and how several signalling molecules are interconnected. In particular, understanding how the overall shaping of the pollen tube tip and how several well-known factors are interconnected were the main goals of this study. As the proper growth of the pollen tube depends on an elaborate mechanism that integrates several molecular and cytological sub-processes its growth mechanism is controlled by several signaling molecules such as polyamines (PAs), which control different aspects of pollen tube germination. In pollen, the homeostasis of PAs is finely regulated and the perturbation of this balance has provided, over the years, interesting evidences about how PAs carry out some of their functions in the cell. For these reasons, PAs ware taken into consideration to be used as perturbing molecules, used to spread light in understanding not only the reciprocal interactions among factors, but also the timing of the events. Besides the great interest about pollen as a model of study, pollen is a relevant topic also because it is the main trigger of seasonal allergies. It often happens that the only “pollen count” does not completely mirror the potential allergenicity of the air. Here from, the necessity to integrate the forecasting of allergenic pollen in the atmosphere with the monitoring of airborne allergenic proteins. In these studies, the amount of airborne allergens were put in correlation not only with pollen counts but also with meteorological factors in order to obtain a broad panel of evidences about factors that may affect pollen and allergen dispersion. Finally, in vitro studies also focused on the characterization of allergens, deeply involved in pollen cell wall organization.