Comments by Joanne Chory, Salk Institute for Biological Studies, San Diego
Because light plays an integral role in modulating both the development and the physiology of plants, the subject of how plants respond to their light environment "is of fundamental interest to the plant science community," comments Joanne Chory, an associate professor of plant biology at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies in San Diego. This paper is part of a series dealing with the characterization of a type of regulatory photoreceptor molecule called phytochrome.
"The phytochromes absorb light in the red and far-red region of the spectrum and are known to regulate a number of developmental responses [to light]," including seed germination, elongation growth, and flower induction, says Chory. While earlier studies had shown that plants had more than one type of phytochrome, Arabidopsis, for example, has five types: phytochrome A-E (R. Sharrock, P. Quail, Genes and Development, 3:1745-57, ...
