Achievement

The phytohormone auxin plays a major role in many aspects of plant development. An important challenge in auxin biology is understanding where specificity arises. Katie Greenham is contributing to resolving this challenge by examining the role of two members of the auxin receptor family. Katie has shown that both Auxin Signaling F-box /AFB 4,5 are the major targets of the synthetic auxin, picloram. She has uncovered a unique role for AFB4 as a negative regulator of auxin signaling in seedlings (Greenham, K. et al., Current Biology 21: 1-6, 2011). To better understand the mechanism for this control and the downstream transcriptional responses she has performed microarray analyses of hypocotyl tissue. The IGERT grant has provided Katie with both resources and support that have aided in her genomic data analysis. The results from this analysis has revealed a previously unknown relationship between auxin signaling and the circadian clock.