Auxin influence on wood formation has been determined

Wood is essential to preserve plant ecosystems on Earth. At the cellular level, wood is the result of a complex process of vascular cell differentiation that requires plant hormone auxin. This hormone travels through the plant from cell to cell thanks to carriers that act like doors at the cell membrane. Influx carriers facilitate the exit of auxin from cells while efflux carriers drive auxin entrance into the cells. Now, experts at the University of Barcelona (UB) and CSIC researchers at the Centre for Research in Agricultural Genomics (CRAG) propose that transport of auxin by influx carriers is a determinant in vascular patterning and differentiation during plant development.

Marta Ibañes, lecturer in the Department of Structure and Constituents of Matter of the UB, and Ana Caño, CSIC-CRAG researcher, have led the study, published in Plos Genetics, which is the result of an interdisciplinary research effort carried out for the last five years.

Article reference: N. Fàbregas, P. Formosa-Jordan , A. Confraria, R. Siligato, J. M. Alonso, R. Swarup, M. J. Bennett, A. Pekka, A. Caño-Delgado, M. Ibañes. “Auxin influx carriers control vascular patterning and xylem differentiation in Arabidopsis thaliana”. Plos Genetics, 2015. DOI: 10.1371/journal.pgen.1005183

Image: In blue, differentiated vascular cells from wood forming a bundle. In yellow, the protein LAX1 (auxin influx carriers) reveal is located at the plant cell membrane where they transport auxin into the cell.