Unlocked Enzyme Structure Shows How Strigolactone Hormone Controls Plant Growth
As sessile organisms, plants have to continually adapt their growth and architecture to the ever-changing environment. To do so, plants have evolved distinct molecular mechanisms to sense and respond to the environment and integrate the signals from outside with endogenous developmental programs.
New research from Nitzan Shabek’s laboratory at the UC Davis College of Biological Sciences, published in Nature Plants, unravels the underlying mechanism of protein targeting and destruction in a specific plant hormone signaling pathway.
“Our lab aims at deciphering sensing mechanisms in plants and understanding how specific enzymes function can be regulated at the molecular levels” said Shabek, assistant professor of biochemistry and structural biology in the Department of Plant Biology. “We have been studying a new plant hormone signal, strigolactone, that governs numerous processes of growth and development including branching and root architecture.”