Figure 2
Orobanche sp. life cycle and ABA receptors and co-receptors transcription patterns. (0–4) Seed germination is stimulated by host-derived strigolactones. Seedlings grow in a chemotropic manner, towards increasing concentrations of the stimulant, and establish cellular connections with the host xylem and phloem. (5) The young parasite continues to develop underground until it is ready to reproduce; then, the flowering shoots emerge from the surface. (6) Each flower can produce around 500 seeds by cross-pollination, self-pollination and apomixis. In table: orange boxes represent highly similar (>95% nucleotide identity in pairwise sequence alignment) matches in the Parasitic Plants Genome Project database. To eliminate the possibility of the matches that were the product of a contaminated genetic material (host tissues), the uniqueness of each match was verified by basic local alignment search (BLAST) in the NCBI database.
