Plant Hormone Cross Talk with a Focus on Strigolactone and Its Chemical Dissection in Rice

Abstract

Plant hormones and several series of small molecules in plants play versatile roles in regulating plant growth and development. Since the finding of the first plant hormone auxin, the studies on both biosynthesis and signaling pathways of plant hormones have made a great progress because of the contribution of genomics and genetics. In rice, several dwarf (D) mutants that show dwarf phenotypes due to loss of functions or gain of functions in various genes have been determined to be involved in plant hormone biosynthesis or signaling pathways. Especially the studies on strigolactones (SLs) have greatly relied on D mutants including D27, D17, D10, D14, D3, and D53. Vice versa, SL studies deciphered how the genes regulate the phenotype and nutrition absorption in rice. In this chapter, we focus on summarizing the recent studies on the cross talk of SLs with other plant hormones to give an insight on the complexity of plant hormone signals. We also introduce and propose the combination of chemical regulators with genomics and genetics studies to drive the studies on plant forward.