| The involvement of the plant hormone ethylene in controlling seed dormancy in Arabidopsis thaliana has been analyzed as part of a larger objective to understand the functional significance of hormone cross-talk in plants. For the first time, ethylene has been shown to have a definitive role in dormancy. Furthermore, distinctive non-redundant roles for two ethylene receptors have been established for seed development. Specifically, the ethylene receptors ERS1 and ETR1 were found to control the entrance and exit into seed dormancy, respectively. Recent advances in small molecule profiling have allowed for the unprecedented ability to simultaneously monitor the levels of abscisic acids, auxins, cytokinins, gibberellins, and several metabolites of these hormones. Applying a recently developed liquid chromatography-electrospray ionization tandem mass spectrometry method analysis of hormones and metabolites to seed development has allowed the visualization of a more complex network of hormone cross-talk that likely occurs during dormancy. |
