HORMONE GRADIENTS VISUALISED USING A NEW FLUORESCENT BIOSENSOR
Small amounts of a chemical hormone can reprogram a plant cell and change it’s growth and physiology. Which plant cells produce these chemicals? Where and when do these chemical hormones go? And what genetic programs do they influence once they arrive?
These questions are now easier to answer for one such chemical, the growth hormone gibberellin. A publication from the labs of Alexander Jones, Sainsbury Laboratory, Cambridge University and Wolf Frommer, formerly of Carnegie Plant Biology, Stanford describes the invention of a fluorescent biosensor that permits the tracking of gibberellins at the cellular level in living plants.
