Roots to shoots: Hormone transport in plants deciphered
Thursday, February 20, 2014 - 19:00
in Biology & Nature
This is a photo of Brookhaven National Laboratory biochemist Chang-Jun Liu with Mingyue Gou, Huijun Yang, Yuanheng Cai and Xuebin Zhang. Plant growth is orchestrated by a spectrum of signals from hormones within a plant. A major group of plant hormones called cytokinins originate in the roots of plants, and their journey to growth areas on the stem and in leaves stimulates plant development. Though these phytohormones have been identified in the past, the molecular mechanism responsible for their transportation within plants was previously poorly understood.