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Plant biology

In their neighbour's shadow

Nature volume 453, pages 298–299 (2008)Cite this article

They can't move away from shade, so plants resort to a molecular solution to find a place in the sun. The action they take is quite radical, and involves a reprogramming of their development.

To survive, organisms must adapt to their ever-changing environment. Animals rely mainly on behavioural adaptive responses such as fighting or fleeing. But being stationary, plants must adjust their shape and metabolism accordingly. Plant hormones play an essential part in these adaptive responses, affecting various physiological and developmental processes. The hormone almost universally involved in plant adaptation is auxin. It exerts its effect at several developmental levels ranging from cell elongation and formation of the embryonic axis to fruit ripening1. Reporting in Cell, two teams — Tao et al.2 and Stepanova et al.3 — identify an enzyme that catalyses the first step in the biosynthesis of auxin, a step that occurs in response to changes in both ambient light and another plant hormone, ethylene.

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Figure 1: Plant plasticity.

References

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Jir̆í Friml is in the Department of Plant Systems Biology, and the Department of Molecular Genetics, VIB, Ghent University, 9052 Ghent, Belgium.,

    Jir̆í Friml

  2. Michael Sauer is at the Centro Nacional de Biotecnología, Genética Molecular de Plantas, 28049 Madrid, Spain.,

    Michael Sauer

Authors
  1. Jir̆í Friml
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  2. Michael Sauer
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Friml, J., Sauer, M. In their neighbour's shadow. Nature 453, 298–299 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1038/453298a

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