Plant Physiol. 2011 May 4. [Epub ahead of print]

A hormonal regulatory module that provides flexibility to tropic responses.

Gallego-Bartolome J, Kami C, Fankhauser C, Alabadi D, Blazquez MA.

Abstract

Plants orient their growth depending on directional stimuli such as light and gravity, in a process known as tropic response. Tropisms result from asymmetrical accumulation of auxin across the responding organ relative to the direction of the stimulus, which causes differential growth rates on both sides of the organ. Here we show that gibberellins (GAs) attenuate the gravitropic reorientation of stimulated Arabidopsis hypocotyls. We show that the modulation occurs through induction of the expression of the negative regulator of auxin signaling IAA19/MSG2. The biological significance of this regulatory mechanism involving GAs and auxin seems to be the maintenance of a high degree of flexibility in tropic responses. This notion is further supported by observations that GA-deficient seedlings showed a much lower variance in the response to gravity compared to wild-type seedlings and that the attenuation of gravitropism by GAs resulted in an increased phototropic response. This suggests that the interplay between auxin and GAs may be particularly important for plant orientation under competing tropic stimuli.