SUMMARY. In this research the involvement of autophagy in the development of microsporogenesis in shepherd’s purse (Capsella bursa-pastoris) as a representative of dico-tyledons and in Siebold’s plantain lily (Hosta sieboldiana) and Virginia spiderwort (Tradescantia virginiana) as representatives of monocotyledons was investigated. It was shown that microsporogenesis in the studied species is accompanied by the development of autophagy, the activation of which is associated with the onset and completion of meiosis, which corresponds to the processes of accumulation and degradation of regulators of meiotic division and tapetogenesis. The presence of cytomixis in meiosis prophase may serve as additional argument in favor of the regulatory role of autophagy in meiosis. It was confirmed that autophagy is involved in the functioning and degradation of the tapetum. In C. bursa-pastoris, active autophagy processes accompany the formation of microspore tetrads, in H. sieboldiana – the functioning and degradation of the tapetum, in T. virginiana – both the formation of tetrads and the final degradation of the tapetum tissue. Obviously, this may be due to the fact that the studied species differ in the type of tapetum (secretory and plasmodial). This difference between the types of tapetum is not clearly diagnosed, and within the secretory type, varieties are differentiated in terms of reorganization, intensity of autophagy and time of degradation of the tapetum tissue. The obtained results allow us to conclude that in general, the functioning and degradation of the tapetum in the studied monocots are accompanied by more intense autophagy than in the representative of dicots.
Keywords: microsporogenesis, tapetogenesis, autophagy, secretory tapetum, plasmodial tapetum, programmed cell death, Capsella bursa-pastoris, Hosta sieboldiana, Tradescantia virginiana
