SGER: A High Throughput Assay for Plant Peptide Growth Factors"

植物含有一种未知的化合物，这种化合物从叶子传递到分生组织并开始开花。这种所谓的“致花剂”的化学性质尚未被发现，尽管这个话题已经存在了50多年。有迹象表明它可能是一种肽。正如Sussman博士所概述的那样，他有一个拟南芥群体，其中包含一种在“早花”启动子控制下表达的标记蛋白，他似乎能够从组合肽库中寻找诱导该启动子的肽。这是一个危险的实验，但回报可能是巨大的——无论是从基础科学的角度来看（在植物中只发现了一种肽“激素”），还是从应用的角度来看。喷洒一种多肽，在田间同时诱导开花，而且比自然界更早。

9706552 Sussman Plants contain an unknown compound that travels from the leaves to meristems and initiates flowering. The chemical nature of this so-called florigen has not been found, although the topic is around for more than 50 years. Indications are that it may be a peptide. As outlined by Dr. Sussman, he has a population of Arabidopsis which contain a marker protein expressed under control of an "early-flowering" promoter and he seems to be able to look in a titerplate assay for peptides fro a combinatorial peptide library for the one that induces this promoter. It is a dangerous experiment, but the rewards can be tremendous - both from a basic science viewpoint (there is only one other peptide "hormone" identified in plants), and from an application standpoint. Spray a peptide and induce flowering in the field simultaneously and earlier than nature would do it.