When the Lights Went On for COP

EYE CANDY:Courtesy of Greg Suh, University of California Los Angeles, Andrew Moore, InfrancoMoore GroupThis developing eye from a chimeric Drosophila has wild-type tissue at the top and csn5 mutant tissue at the bottom causing disorganization. Overlaid is a schematic showing the predicted metalloprotease site of CSN5 cleaving an isopeptide bond.It doesn't take a green thumb to predict what happens to plants left in the dark: They wither. But in the late 1980s and early 1990s, researchers, includ

Written byEugene Russo

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Courtesy of Greg Suh, University of California Los Angeles, Andrew Moore, InfrancoMoore Group

This developing eye from a chimeric Drosophila has wild-type tissue at the top and csn5 mutant tissue at the bottom causing disorganization. Overlaid is a schematic showing the predicted metalloprotease site of CSN5 cleaving an isopeptide bond.

It doesn't take a green thumb to predict what happens to plants left in the dark: They wither. But in the late 1980s and early 1990s, researchers, including people in Xing-Wang Deng's Yale University lab, stumbled upon a group of intriguing Arabidopsis mutants that seemed to defy intuition. If provided the right nutrition, these plants could retain a shape, form, and cellular state similar to those grown in ample light for weeks, and even months, of sustained darkness. Some could even flower.

In 1994, Deng's group identified COP9, one of the genes responsible for this impressive feat.1 After doing some ...

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