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Secret is out

gibberellins are no gibberish for plants. In fact, they are plant growth regulators that influence a range of developmental processes including germination, stem elongation, flowering, leaf ageing and fruit formation. Numbering 126, gibberellins have been known for several decades, but scientists were clueless about how they work. No more.

Makoto Matsuoka and his team at Nagoya University in Japan have discovered that gibberellins work through a protein called gid1. They suggest that when bound to a gibberellin, gid1 interacts with another protein that has the opposite effect

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