Abstract:

Light affects many aspects of plant development, including seed germination, stem elongation, and floral initiation. How photoreceptors control photomorphogenic processes is not yet fully understood. Because phytohormones are chemical regulators of plant development, it may not be surprising that light affects, directly or indirectly, cellular levels and signaling processes of various phytohormones, such as auxin, gibberellins (GA), cytokinin, ethylene, abscisic acid (ABA), and brassinosteroids (BR). Among those phytohormones, light regulation of GA metabolism has probably attracted more attention among photobiologists and it is arguably the most extensively studied plant hormone at present with respect to its role in photomorphogenesis. It has become increasingly clear that phytochromes and cryptochromes are the major photoreceptors mediating light regulation of GA homeostasis. This short article attempts to examine some recent developments in our understanding of how light and photoreceptors regulate GA biosynthesis and catabolism during seedling development. It is not our intention to carry out a comprehensive review of the field, and readers are referred to recent review articles for a more complete view of this area of study (Kamiya and Garcia-Martinez 1999; Hedden and Phillips 2000; Garcia-Martinez and Gil 2001; Olszewski et al. 2002; Halliday and Fankhauser 2003; Sun and Gubler 2004).Author for correspondence. Tel: +1 310 206 9576; Fax: +1 310 206 3987; E-mail: clin@mcdb.ucla.edu

Key words: phytochrome, cyrptochrone, gibberellins.