9728907 Watson Several environmental factors influence the growth and development of green plants, but among them light is perhaps the most important. Apart from its role as the energy source for photosynthesis, light provides crucial environmental cues that control virtually every stage of the plant life cycle, from seed germination, through stem and leaf development, to flowering. The long-term goal of this research is to understand how the perception and transduction of light signals regulate the growth and development of green plants. The research will focus on two protein kinases and their genes from the garden pea. Protein kinases are ubiquitous enzymes that are frequently involved in signal transduction processes. One of the kinases under study is predicted to be a blue light photoreceptor, while the other is likely to be involved in signal transduction. A combination of genetic, molecular, and biochemical approaches is proposed to test these hypotheses, and thereby elucidate the roles of these two protein kinases in transducing light signals. This work will contribute to and expand our understanding of the fundamental mechanisms by which light regulates plant development.
