Chinese Bulletin of Botany ›› 2020, Vol. 55 ›› Issue (3): 369-381.DOI: 10.11983/CBB19150

• SPECIAL TOPICS • Previous Articles     Next Articles

Thoughts and Applications of Chemical Biology in Phytohormonal Research

Jiahui Xu1,2,Yujia Dai2,3,Xiaofeng Luo2,3,Kai Shu2,*(),Weiming Tan1,*()   

  1. 1College of Agronomy and Biotechnology, China Agricultural University, Beijing 100193, China
    2College of Ecological and Environmental, Northwestern Polytechnical University, Xi’an 710012, China
    3Institute of Ecological Agriculture, Sichuan Agricultural University, Chengdu 611130, China
  • Received:2019-08-09 Accepted:2019-12-31 Online:2020-05-01 Published:2020-07-06
  • Contact: Kai Shu,Weiming Tan

Abstract: Phytohormones are important regulatory substances for plant growth, directly or indirectly functioning in various developmental stages, from seed germination to maturity, as well as numerous biotic/abiotic stresses response. With the continuous improvement of small molecular compounds used to explore the molecular mechanisms of physiology and metabolism, chemical biology, a new frontier interdisciplinary discipline between plant biology and chemistry, was coined, and the important progresses have been achieved in a short time in the past several years. It has been revealed that the ideas and methods of chemical biology play an irreplaceable role in the research of plant hormones, especially in the area of plant signal transduction. This review summarizes the published small molecular analogs of major plant hormones, and outlines the mechanisms of how these small molecular analogs function in plant growth and development, and in response to biotic/abiotic stresses. Finally, the potential applications of these analogs in agricultural practice and future research directions were discussed.

Key words: phytohormones, chemical biology, hormone analogue, molecular function, development