title: Phytochrome signaling: time to tighten up the loose ends.
abstract: Phytochromes are red and far-red light photoreceptors that play fundamental roles in controlling many aspects of plant growth and development in response to light. The past two decades have witnessed the mechanistic elucidation of the action mode of phytochromes, including their regulation by external and endogenous factors and how they exert their function as transcriptional regulators. More importantly, recent advances have substantially deepened our understanding on the integration of the phytochrome-mediated signal into other cellular and developmental processes, such as elongation of hypocotyls, shoot branching, circadian clock, and flowering time, which often involves complex intercellular and interorgan signaling. Based on these advances, this review illustrates a blueprint of our current understanding of phytochrome signaling and its crosstalk with other signaling pathways, and also points out still open questions that need to be addressed in the future.
authors: Biotechnology Research Institute, Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, Beijing 100081, China.
authors: Hai
authors: H
authors: Wang
authors: Biotechnology Research Institute, Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, Beijing 100081, China. Electronic address: wanghaiyang@caas.cn.
authors: Haiyang
authors: H
authors: Wang
mesh_terms: D057906:Circadian Clocks / Q000502:physiology; D018546:Hypocotyl / Q000378:metabolism; D008027:Light; D010834:Phytochrome / Q000378:metabolism*; D015398:Signal Transduction / Q000502:physiology
chemical_list: D010834:Phytochrome
keywords: cell signaling; light regulation; light signaling; photomorphogenesis