Rafflesia produces the largest single flowers in the world, at the expense of its host vine, Tetrastigma, yet it begins as an inconspicuous endophyte. It is unknown how the Rafflesia seed gets into the host and germinates. Multiple locals claim to have successfully grown the holoparasitic flower from seeds resulting in blooms. Using available morpho-histological studies, combined with descriptions from local Rafflesia seed growers, as well as unpublished details of our own work, we filled in the missing details of Rafflesia’s life cycle from seed germination to endophyte inside the host before it transitions to its flowering stage. Post-germination, the Rafflesia endophyte forms a clonal network of vegetative meristematic cells, separated by the dividing host tissue, each meristematic cell cluster eventually developing into the primordial floral bud or protocorm. We propose future work involving mass spectrometry imaging to characterize the metabolites that allow communication between distant endophytic clusters and floral bud induction without destroying the histology of the sample.

中文翻译：

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植物中的植物：对其寄主内大王花内生菌发育的见解

大王花生产世界上最大的单朵花，以牺牲其寄主藤本植物 Tetrastigma 为代价，但它开始时是一种不起眼的内生菌。尚不清楚大王花种子如何进入宿主并发芽。多个当地人声称已经成功地从种子中培育出全寄生花，从而导致开花。使用现有的形态组织学研究，结合当地大王花种子种植者的描述，以及我们自己工作中未发表的细节，我们填补了大王花生命周期从种子萌发到寄主内生菌过渡到开花之前缺失的细节阶段。发芽后，大王花内生菌形成营养分生细胞的克隆网络，由分裂的宿主组织分隔，每个分生细胞群最终发育成原始花芽或原球茎。我们建议未来的工作涉及质谱成像来表征代谢物，这些代谢物允许远距离内生菌群和花芽诱导之间的交流，而不会破坏样品的组织学。