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Plant Signals

 Consulting Editors: Elliot Meyerowitz, Wolf Frommer, Virginia Walbot

Plant growth and development are regulated by the plant hormones, small-molecule metabolites that have evolved signaling functions. Plants also respond with changes in morphology and physiology to a remarkable range of external signals - light, of course, and many others, including temperature, moisture, infection, and touch. For this series, we have invited Q&As on established and less well established plant signaling pathways, reflecting what is known and what is still to be discovered.

We welcome research submissions on the many open questions that remain to be answered in plant signaling.

  3. In plants, the shoot apical meristem (SAM) has two main functions, involving the production of all aerial organs on the one hand and self-maintenance on the other, allowing the production of organs during the ...

    Authors: Thomas Stanislas, Matthieu Pierre Platre, Mengying Liu, Léa E. S. Rambaud-Lavigne, Yvon Jaillais and Olivier Hamant
    Citation: BMC Biology 2018 16:20
    Content type: Research article Published on:

  5. There is increasing evidence that all cells sense mechanical forces in order to perform their functions. In animals, mechanotransduction has been studied during the establishment of cell polarity, fate, and di...

    Authors: Olivier Hamant and Elizabeth S. Haswell
    Citation: BMC Biology 2017 15:59
    Content type: Review Published on:

  6. Salicylic acid (SA) is an important plant hormone that regulates many aspects of plant growth and development, as well as resistance to (a)biotic stress. Efforts to identify SA effector proteins have revealed ...

    Authors: D’Maris Amick Dempsey and Daniel F. Klessig
    Citation: BMC Biology 2017 15:23
    Content type: Question and Answer Published on:

  7. Brassinosteroids (BRs) are a class of polyhydroxylated steroidal phytohormones in plants with similar structures to animals’ steroid hormones. Brassinosteroids regulate a wide range of physiological processes ...

    Authors: Jiao Tang, Zhifu Han and Jijie Chai
    Citation: BMC Biology 2016 14:113
    Content type: Question and Answer Published on:

  10. A significant part of the communication between plant cells is mediated by signaling peptides and their corresponding plasma membrane-localized receptor-like kinases. This communication mechanism serves as a k...

    Authors: Maike Breiden and Rüdiger Simon
    Citation: BMC Biology 2016 14:58
    Content type: Question and Answer Published on:

  12. Plants deploy immune receptors to detect pathogen-derived molecules and initiate defense responses. Intracellular plant immune receptors called nucleotide-binding leucine-rich repeat (NLR) proteins contain a c...

    Authors: Panagiotis F. Sarris, Volkan Cevik, Gulay Dagdas, Jonathan D. G. Jones and Ksenia V. Krasileva
    Citation: BMC Biology 2016 14:8
    Content type: Research article Published on:

  16. Plants are able to sense UV-B through the UV-B photoreceptor UVR8. UV-B photon absorption by a UVR8 homodimer leads to UVR8 monomerization and interaction with the downstream signaling factor COP1. This then i...

    Authors: Roman Ulm and Gareth I Jenkins
    Citation: BMC Biology 2015 13:45
    Content type: Question and answer Published on: