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A team of researchers at the Instituto Gulbenkian de Ciência (IGC), Portugal, discovered that pollen, the organ that contains the plant male gametes, communicate with the pistil, their female counterpart, using a mechanism commonly observed in the nervous system of animals. This study not only reveals a new mechanism which underlies reproduction in plants, but also opens an exciting new avenue in the study of how cell-cell communication is conserved between animals and plants.