© The Author 2008. Published by the Molecular Plant Shanghai Editorial Office in association with Oxford University Press on behalf of CSPP and IPPE, SIBS, CAS.
Beyond the Receptor
| The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below. |
Had this Special Issue on plant hormones been published 5 years ago, it is likely that details about biosynthetic pathways would have taken center stage. As articles in this issue show, however, the field of plant hormone research has progressed rapidly and is now moving beyond the search for receptors. Progress in research on the mechanism of action of plant hormones has been rapid; receptors for the main classes of hormones have been identified; and the search is on for players downstream in signal-transduction chains.
A new theme that is beginning to dominate the field is interactions between hormones—a topic that is the focus of several articles in this Special Issue. Klaus Palme and his colleagues review progress in the area of auxin action using a systems-biology approach. Systems biology may be uniquely suited to investigations of hormone interactions both because a large volume of data will be produced