Photoperception and its mechanism of blue light receptor phototropin in plants

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Plants use light for controlling their development and physiological phenomena. Blue light is as effective as red light and mediates phototropic response, chloroplast movement, stomata opening, leaf expansion, etc. These responses are mediated by one of the blue light photoreceptors, phototropins. Phototropins are consisted of serine/threonine protein kinase in C-terminus half and two LOV domains in N-terminus half. LOV domains bind flavin mononucleotides and absorb blue light. Our purpose in this grant was to study the phototropin signal trasduction pathways in chloroplast movement, stomata opening and phototropism and clarify the primary action of photoperception of phototropins and related photoreceptor, phytochrome 3. We studied on these subjects for four years from 2001 to March 2005 and found various new aspects on phototropins. We published 44 original papers including 4 Nature papers and 1 Science paper and 17 reviews on phototropin and phototropin related photoreceptors. Some of them are listed in the references attached.Although our research in this project finished at the end of March 2005, we held a two-days symposium on phototropins on November 2005 at Okazaki, hoping further advancement of phototropin studies in near future. In this symposium, two experts on this subject, Dr.John Christie from Glasgow and Dr.Kevin Gardner from Texas were invited and hot discussions were taken place for searching the ways to go for further advanced studies of phototropins and phototropin-mediated responses.