E. Lopez-Juez, A. Nagatani, K.-I. Tomizawa, M. Deak, R. Kern, R.E. Kendrick, M. Furuya, "The cucumber long hypocotyl mutant lacks a light-stable PHYB-like phytochrome," Plant Cell, 4:241-51, 1992.
Enrique Lopez-Juez (Laboratory of Plant Biological Regulation, Frontier Research Program, Riken Institute, Wako, Japan): "Through light signals, plants can decide when to germinate, to stop elongating underground and start expressing genes for leaf components (de-etiolate), or in which season to flower. The modification of growth pattern to avoid shading by competing neighbors (shade-avoidance reaction) is one such response. Characterized for more than 20 years, it is a function of phytochrome, a key plant photoreceptor. Enrichment in far red light in shade, through selective filtering/reflectance, lowers the proportion of active phytochrome, triggering the response.
"During the 1980s it became clear that, besides the `bulk' phytochrome very abundant before de-etiolation, now known as PhyA, some other phytochromes existed. In previous physiological work on the...
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