@ARTICLE{10.3389/fpls.2020.00871, AUTHOR={Ohnishi, Yukinosuke and Kawashima, Tomokazu}, TITLE={Plasmogamic Paternal Contributions to Early Zygotic Development in Flowering Plants}, JOURNAL={Frontiers in Plant Science}, VOLUME={11}, YEAR={2020}, URL={https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpls.2020.00871}, DOI={10.3389/fpls.2020.00871}, ISSN={1664-462X}, ABSTRACT={Flowering plant zygotes possess complete developmental potency, and the mixture of male and female genetic and cytosolic materials in the zygote is a trigger to initiate embryo development. Plasmogamy, the fusion of the gamete cytoplasms, facilitates the cellular dynamics of the zygote. In the last decade, mutant analyses, live cell imaging-based observations, and direct observations of fertilized egg cells by in vitro fusion of isolated gametes have accelerated our understanding of the post-plasmogamic events in flowering plants including cell wall formation, gamete nuclear migration and fusion, and zygotic cell elongation and asymmetric division. Especially, it has become more evident that paternal parent-of-origin effects, via sperm cytoplasm contents, not only control canonical early zygotic development, but also activate a biparental signaling pathway critical for cell fate determination after the first cell division. Here, we summarize the plasmogamic paternal contributions via the entry of sperm contents during/after fertilization in flowering plants.} }