《Nature》Why do plants grow towards light?

Charles Darwin had a greater impact on science than most people

In his 1880 book The Power of Plant Movement, Darwin pointed out that plants may grow in a certain direction based on environmental cues such as light or gravity

In 1926, this "growth-accelerating substance" was discovered as the hormone auxin, which was subsequently discovered to be the growth factor that controls much of a plant's response to environmental changes

The PIN protein was shown to be an auxin transporter

Pedersen's team has now provided the first structural basis for the transport of auxin via the PIN protein and has carried out a comprehensive biochemical characterization with collaborators led by Associate Professor Ulrich Hammes at the Technical University of Munich

Associate Professor Bjørn Panyella Pedersen, who led the study, explained that the project was shaped by a series of accidental and serendipitous connections: "We launched this project in 2016 when I overheard an extensive report on plant physiology, It mentions auxin by the way

However, the work stalled for almost a year until Ulrich Hammes contacted the Pedersen lab to collaborate on a completely different project related to algal ion balance

"We quickly discovered our mutual interest in auxin transport and had a fruitful collaboration on the subject," explains Pedersen, "After this, it still took my team four years to develop a sufficient Providing biochemical samples of the data was a concentrated effort of two outstanding postdocs in the lab, first Mikael Winkler and later Kien Lam Ung

Once the group succeeded in creating a high-quality sample, progress came quickly

"Getting these results is like we've found the missing piece of the puzzle that people have been looking for for a century

Pedersen's group specializes in proton-driven transport across cell membranes, and their work is highly relevant to the field of plant physiology

references:

Structures and mechanism of the plant PIN-FORMED auxin transporter