August 8, 2013

Atomic insights into plant growth



Researchers from Tübingen resolve how a plant steroid hormone makes plants grow

If one wants to better understand how plants grow, one must analyse the chemistry of life in its molecular detail. Michael Hothorn from the Friedrich-Miescher-Laboratory of the Max Planck Society in Tübingen and his team are doing just that. Their latest work now reveals that a plant membrane receptor requires a helper protein to sense a growth-promoting steroid hormone and to transduce this signal across the cell membrane.