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Emerging Complexity of Ethylene Signal Transduction

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Abstract

The plant hormone ethylene modulates growth and development and mediates diverse stresses and pathogens. Genetic studies with a laboratory reference plant, Arabidopsis, enabled researchers first to identify and place several key signaling components in a linear pathway for hormone signaling. Biochemical and cellular investigations have now led us to integrate functionally these genetically identified factors within a signaling context. Multi-step regulation of protein stability that accompanies phosphorylation/de-phosphorylation appears to be a central and underlying molecular mechanism. Here, we briefly summarize recent findings in such post-translational regulation of ethylene signaling factors. Based on this, we can postulate a new framework and formulate specific questions to unravel the emerging dynamics and complexity of ethylene signaling.

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Acknowledgments

We apologize to the researchers whose works could not be cited here because of space constraints. We thank Jen Sheen for supporting us over our post-doctoral researches and sharing information. This work was supported by KOSEF (2009-0075514 and 2009-0068557) and the promotion program for new faculty, Sungkyunkwan University (2008-0843-000).

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  1. Department of Biological Science, College of Natural Science, Sungkyunkwan University, 300 Cheon-cheon dong, Jangan-Gu, Suwon, 440-764, South Korea

    Young-Hee Cho & Sang-Dong Yoo

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  1. Young-Hee Cho
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  2. Sang-Dong Yoo
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Correspondence to Sang-Dong Yoo.

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Cho, YH., Yoo, SD. Emerging Complexity of Ethylene Signal Transduction. J. Plant Biol. 52, 283–288 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12374-009-9038-6

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