突然変異体を利用したテルペノイド植物ホルモンの生物有機化学的研究(学会賞)

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Combined chemical and biological approaches are essential for understanding hormone biosynthesis and action. We have used rice and Arabidopsis mutants to study how terpenoid hormones regulate growth and development in plants. Our work in Arabidopsis has shown that gibberellins (GAs) play an important role in growth responses to environmental signals, such as light and temperature. In collaboration with other research groups, we uncovered new GA deactivation mechanisms, including epoxidation by a cytochrome P450 monooxygenase in rice and methylation by methyltransferases in Arabidopsis. Studies on the early stage of GA biosynthesis revealed that ent-kaurene, a hydrocarbon intermediate, can move between plants as a volatile under normal growth conditions. Recently, we set out to study on a new terpenoid hormone; previous studies using shoot branching mutants of pea, Arabidopsis and rice have suggested the involvement of a new hormonal signal in inhibiting shoot branching commonly in these species. We found that strigolactones, a group of terpenoid lactones initially identified as germination stimulants of root parasitic plants, act as the novel shoot branching inhibitor or its biosynthetic precursors. Acknowledgements: I thank laboratory members for their dedicated contributions to these projects. I thank my supervisors and collaborators for their support, advise and discussions.
2009-10-06