A few weeks ago, I wrote about auxin. And how auxin signaling works. As promised in my last post, I’m going to tell the story of identifying the auxin receptor and a recent development in the story. Background. Ascribing a function to genes (a single unit of the multi-gene/genome DNA blueprint of an organism) is … More The Auxin Receptor(s).
Cytokinins: Part 2. Last week, I told the story about how cytokinins as a factor that induced cell division and new shoot formation. The first in the class of molecules was the adenine derivative Kinetin. Kinetin is a synthetic molecule, or the product of rearranging natural ones when DNA sits out for many months. Carlos … More Cytokinins, Part 2.
This post touches on a lot of things. I wasn’t aware of just how many things interlinked in this story. So I hope you enjoy the story of the discovery of cytokinins, and the connections made herein. This year is the 60th anniversary of the discovery of the first cytokinin, kinetin. And this one is … More The Discovery of Cytokinin.
It’s hormone month at The Quiet Branches. It makes a little sense now that I think about it. Love is supposedly in the air with Valentine’s Day and the plants that go dormant for winter will soon be back, engaging their hormone pathways to sprout new growth. In a way, I hope I’m teaching you … More Plant Hormones: Ethylene
Here is a list of small molecule (chemical) signals used by most/all plants: Auxin Cytokinin Ethylene Abscisic acid Gibberellin Salicylic acid Jasmonic acid Brassinosteroids Strigolactones Don’t worry about what these names mean or what these things are for now. I’ll be writing posts about them in the coming weeks. Hormones In human growth and development, … More Plant hormones: Auxin.
The history of science is vast. And even though the term science is recent in human history, humans have always been tinkerers and explorers. The history of plant science is no less interesting or complex. It is obviously is bigger than a single blog post. So here, I’ll give a highlight reel and get into … More History of plant science.
What is a plant? And why care about them or study them? These may seem like obvious questions. They’re the green things. Some of them we eat and we’ve been selectively breeding crops for ~10,000 years. As you’re reading, I invite you to think about where plants show up in your own life. There is … More What is a plant?
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