Plant signaling gets complex

Last night's session (February 12) on hormones networks at the joint Keystone meeting on plant signaling and immunity in Keystone, Co, began with Charlie Chaplin. Specifically, the audience was treated to a video clip of the scene in Modern Times where Chaplin, a worker on a factory assembly line, becomes curious about the gears that drive the machinery, and to the horror of other workers, dives onto the assembly line and down the chute to explore. It was a clear metaphor for what's going on in the field. Over the past decade, as researchers first began identifying receptors of key plant signaling molecules such as linkurl:auxins,;http://www.the-scientist.com/article/display/21103/ gibberellins, and linkurl:brassinosteroids,;http://www.the-scientist.com/news/display/53293/ they've taken a fairly linear view of the pathways involved, the session's organizer, linkurl:Jennifer Nemhauser;http://protist.biology.washington.edu/nemhauser/people.htm of the University of Washington, explained. But increasingly, the level of complexity in these pathways, and the crosstalk between them, is becoming clear. I caught up...