A single hormone guides how plants bend, branch, and survive
Leitner V, Benková E
Plant Signaling
When your tomatoes stretch toward the window or your tree sends up a new shoot after pruning, auxin is the signal calling the shots, and understanding it explains why those responses happen and how to work with them.
Plants can't run from drought, shade, or crowded roots, so they adapt instead. They do this by moving growth around: leaning toward light, pushing out new roots when water is scarce, or holding back branches until the timing is right. A hormone called auxin acts like the brain behind these decisions, carrying messages from one part of the plant to another and telling each cell what to do next.
Key Findings
Auxin is central to nearly every major aspect of plant development, including root formation, branching, leaf growth, and flowering.
Plants use auxin to rapidly redirect or adjust growth rates in response to environmental signals such as light, drought, shade, and physical obstacles.
Developmental plasticity in plants, the ability to remodel body architecture by forming or suppressing new organs, depends on auxin as a key coordinating signal.
chevron_right Technical Summary
Auxin is a plant hormone that coordinates nearly every aspect of how plants grow and adapt. It lets plants respond to stress, light, and obstacles by adjusting where and how fast they grow, without ever being able to move away from the problem.
Abstract Preview
Original paper
Auxin and the control of plant growth and development.
Plants are remarkable organisms. Unlike animals, they cannot flee and, rooted in one place, they must cope with whatever challenges arise - nutrient scarcity, drought, shade, wind or obstacles in t...
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