Many plants are self-incompatible―that is, they have mechanisms to prevent fertilization by their own pollen. A familiar and uncommonly versatile protein, ubiquitin, is found to be a central player in one such system. Ubiquitin is certainly living up to its name. This small protein, first named because of its seemingly ubiquitous presence in animal and plant cells, now seems to be an almost universal regulator molecule. Ubiquitin attaches to a multitude of other proteins, and its well-known role is as a tag that directs unwanted proteins to the machinery that eliminates them. But ubiquitin attachment is also turning out to influence events as diverse as gene transcription and the movement of proteins and other large molecules around a cell. In plants, ubiquitin is known to be involved in regulating responses to hormones and light, in the formation of seeds and flowers, and in the entrainment of circadian rhythms and defence against invading microbes. But there's more. As described in The Plant Cell, a group led by Daphne Goring―Stone et al.―now show that ubiquitin also helps to regulate mate selection in plants.
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机译：许多植物是自我不相容的，也就是说，它们具有防止自身花粉受精的机制。人们发现，一种熟悉且罕见的通用蛋白质泛素是这种系统中的核心角色。泛素无疑是名副其实的。这种小蛋白之所以被命名，是因为它在动植物细胞中似乎无处不在，现在似乎是一种几乎通用的调节分子。泛素可与多种其他蛋白质结合，其众所周知的作用是作为将不需要的蛋白质引导至消除它们的机制的标签。但是，遍在蛋白的附着也正在影响各种事件，例如基因转录以及蛋白质和其他大分子在细胞周围的运动。在植物中，众所周知，泛素参与调节对激素和光的反应，参与种子和花朵的形成以及参与昼夜节律和防御入侵微生物。但是还有更多。正如《植物细胞》（The Plant Cell）中所述，由达芙妮·戈林（Daphne Goring），石等人（Stone et al。）领导的一个小组现在表明，泛素还有助于调节植物的配偶选择。
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