Carotenoids and their cleavage products: Biosynthesis and functions

TL;DR: A novel algorithm is used to systematically identify BGCs in the extensive extant microbial sequencing data, indicating for the first time the important roles these compounds play in Gram-negative cell biology.

TL;DR: Knowledge of the structure of carlactone will be crucial for understanding the biology of strigolactones and may have applications in combating parasitic weeds.

TL;DR: This review focuses on SL biosynthesis, describes the hormonal and environmental factors that determine this process, and discusses SL transport and downstream signaling as well as the role of SLs in regulating plant development.

TL;DR: The relevance of Arabidopsis as a model system for the study of carotenogenesis and how metabolic engineering approaches in this plant have taught important lessons forcarotenoid biotechnology are discussed.

TL;DR: Strigolactones are a group of sesquiterpene lactones, previously isolated as seed-germination stimulants for the parasitic weeds Striga and Orobanche, and a synthetic analogue, GR24, induced extensive hyphal branching in germinating spores of the AM fungus Gigaspora margarita at very low concentrations.

TL;DR: Identification of ABA metabolic genes has revealed that multiple metabolic steps are differentially regulated to fine-tune the ABA level at both transcriptional and post-transcriptional levels.

TL;DR: Evidence is presented that carotenoid cleavage dioxygenase 8 shoot branching mutants of pea are strigolactone deficient and that strigOLactone application restores the wild-type branching phenotype to ccd8 mutants, and that other branching mutants previously characterized as lacking a response to the branching inhibition signal also lack striglactone response.

TL;DR: It is proposed that strigolactones act as a new hormone class—or their biosynthetic precursors—in regulating above-ground plant architecture, and also have a function in underground communication with other neighbouring organisms.