Sensor allows plant hormone to be seen in plant tissues

The research, published in Nature, describes how the scientists engineered the sensor in the model plant Arabidopsis thaliana.
 
Plants, like animals, have hormones that regulate how they grow and develop. Plant hormones give their shape to plants, cause tomatoes to ripen, leaves to drop and roots to grow downwards. Auxin is essential for plant body development. It has a key role in the coordination of many growth and behavioural processes in a plant’s life cycle, from embryo patterning, to regulation of leaf and root growth and even the shape of flowers.
 
The new sensor, dubbed DII-VENUS, can monitor rapid changes in auxin and allowed researchers to visualise, almost in real-time, the redistribution of auxin during developmental responses. This has revealed much more complex patterns of auxin in tissues than previously thought, indicating that sensitivity to the hormone within tissues precisely control their capacity to respond.
 
Malcolm Bennett, professor of plant sciences in the School of Biosciences and Biology and the director at the Centre for Plant Integrative Biology (CPIB), told The Engineer the sensor could be described as a ’protein sensor’.