Megan Scudellari | Jun 1, 2010 | 3 min read
Today, more than a century after a German-Polish botanist first described the process of fertilization in flowering plants, scientists have identified an elusive molecular signal critical to that process. The finding, published this week in linkurl:PLoS Biology,;http://www.plosbiology.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pbio.1000388 sheds light on the evolution of plant fertilization mechanisms and could lead to strategies to overcome species-specific barriers for crossbreeding crops.