Plant growth hormone works through a fast, newly understood shortcut
Chu J, Ang ACH, de Roij M, Strader L, Xu T
Plant Signaling
The way your houseplant leans toward a sunny window or how a pruned stem decides to branch out is controlled by this hormone pathway, and understanding it better could improve how gardeners propagate cuttings and shape plant growth.
Auxin is the hormone that tells a plant where to grow, whether that's roots reaching down, stems bending toward light, or a pruned branch deciding to sprout sideways. For a century scientists thought it worked mainly through a slow process involving gene activation, but this review shows a much faster response system also exists, involving protein switches and receptor proteins on the outside of plant cells. Together these two systems explain how plants react almost instantly to their environment while also making long-term growth decisions.
Key Findings
The classic 'nuclear auxin pathway' (NAP), identified through genetics, has been the dominant framework for explaining slow, transcription-based auxin responses for decades.
New research shows auxin also triggers rapid responses within seconds to minutes, driven by widespread protein phosphorylation rather than gene expression changes.
Long-debated extracellular auxin-binding proteins are being reexamined as key players in these fast response pathways, alongside some NAP components taking on new non-transcriptional roles.
chevron_right Technical Summary
Scientists are updating our understanding of auxin, the master growth hormone that steers how plants bend toward light, branch, and form roots, revealing a fast-acting signaling pathway that works alongside the slower genetic one discovered decades ago.
Abstract Preview
Original paper
Auxin signaling.
Following its discovery nearly a century ago, the signaling molecule auxin has captured the interest of plant scientists. Mostly through genetics, key components of the auxin response were identifi...
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