Gibberellin

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Gibberellin

Gibberellins (GAs) are plant hormone

Plant hormone

Plant hormones are chemicals that regulate plant growth. Plant hormones are signal molecules produced within the plant, and occur in extremely low concentrations....
s that regulate growth and influence various developmental processes

Biological process

A biological process is a process of a living organism. Biological processes are made up of any number of chemical reactions or other events that results in a Chemical transformation....
, including "stem elongation, germination

Germination

Germination is the process whereby growth emerges from a period of dormancy. The most common example of germination is the sprouting of a seedling from a seed of an flowering plant or gymnosperm....
, dormancy

Dormancy

Dormancy is a period in an Organism Biological life cycle when growth, development, and physical activity is temporarily suspended. This minimizes metabolism and therefore helps an organism to conserve energy....
, flowering, sex expression

Gene expression

Gene expression is the process by which inheritable information from a gene, such as the DNA sequence, is made into a functional gene product, such as protein or RNA....
, enzyme induction and leaf and fruit senescence

Senescence

Senescence encompasses all of the biological processes of a living organism's approaching an advanced age . The word senescence is derived from the Latin word senex, meaning "old man" or "old age" or "advanced in age"....
."

Gibberellin was first recognized in 1926 by a Japan

Japan

Japan is an island country in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, People's Republic of China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south....
ese scientist, Eiichi Kurosawa, studying bakanae
Bakanae

or bakanae disease, from the Japanese for "foolish seedling", is a plant disease that infects the rice plant. It is caused by the fungus Gibberella fujikuroi, whose metabolism produces a surplus of gibberellic acid, which acts as a growth hormone for the plant; this causes hypertrophy....
, the "foolish seedling" disease in rice. It was first isolated in 1935 by Teijiro Yabuta, from fungal strains (Gibberella fujikuroi
Gibberella fujikuroi

Gibberella fujikuroi is a fungus plant pathogen. It causes bakanae disease in rice seedlings, by overloading them with the phytohormone gibberellin as its own metabolic byproduct....
) provided by Kurosawa.

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Encyclopedia

Gibberellins (GAs) are plant hormone

Plant hormone

Biological process

Germination

Dormancy

Gene expression

Senescence

Japan

World War II

World War II, or the Second World War , was a global military conflict which involved a Participants in World War II, including all of the great powers, organised into two opposing military alliances: the Allies of World War II and the Axis powers....
. In the United States, the first research was undertaken by a unit at Camp Dietrick

Fort Detrick

Fort Detrick is a U.S. Army Medical Command installation located in Frederick, Maryland, USA. Historically, Fort Detrick was the center for the U.S....
in Maryland, via studying seedlings of the bean Vicia faba
Vicia faba

Vicia faba, the Broad Bean, Fava Bean, Faba Bean, Field Bean, Bell Bean or Tic Bean is a species of legume native to north Africa and southwest Asia, and extensively cultivated elsewhere....
. In the United Kingdom, work on isolating new types of gibberellin was undertaken at Imperial Chemical Industries

Imperial Chemical Industries

Imperial Chemical Industries is a United Kingdom Chemistry subsidiary of a Netherlands Conglomerate and one of the largest chemical producers in the world....
. Interest in gibberellins spread around the world as the potential for its use on various commercially important plants became more obvious. For example, research which started at the University of California, Davis

University of California, Davis

The University of California, Davis is a public university research university located in Davis, California, and one of ten campuses in the University of California system....
in the mid-1950s led to its commercial use on Thompson seedless table grapes

Sultana (grape)

The sultana is a type of white, seedless grape of Turkey, Greece or Iran origin. It is also the name given to the raisin made from it; such sultana raisins are often called simply sultanas or sultanis. These are typically larger than the Zante currants made from Zante grapes, but smaller than "normal" Raisin....
throughout California by 1962. A known opponent to gibberellin is Paclobutrazol

Paclobutrazol

Paclobutrazol, PBZ is a plant growth retardant and triazole fungicide. It is a known opponent of the plant hormone gibberellin. It acts by inhibiting gibberellin biosynthesis, reducing internode growth to give stouter stems, increasing root growth, causing early fruitset and increasing seedset in plants such as tomato and pepper....
(PBZ), which in turn is growth inhibiting and inducing early fruitset as well as seedset.

Chemistry

Chemically, all known gibberellins are diterpenoid

Terpenoid

The terpenoids , sometimes called isoprenoids, are a large and diverse class of naturally-occurring organic compound similar to terpenes, derived from five-carbon isoprene units assembled and modified in thousands of ways....
acids that are synthesized by the terpenoid pathway in plastids and then modified in the endoplasmic reticulum and cytosol until they reach their biologically-active form. All gibberellins are derived from the ent-gibberellane skeleton, but are synthesised via ent-kaurene. The gibberellins are named GA1....GAn in order of discovery. Gibberellic acid

Gibberellic acid

Gibberellic acid stimulate rapid stem and root growth,2) induce mitotic division in the leaves of some plants,3) increase seed germination rate....
, which was the first gibberellin to be structurally characterised, is GA3.

As of 2003 there were 126 GAs identified from plants, fungi and bacteria.

Gibberellins are produced in greater mass when it’s cold. They stimulate cell elongation, breaking and budding, seedless fruits, and seed germination. They do the last by breaking the seed’s dormancy and acting as a chemical messenger. Its hormone binds to a receptor and Ca²⁺ activates a protein, calmodulin, and the complex binds to DNA, producing an enzyme to stimulate growth in the embryo.