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Plant Hormones pp 95–114Cite as

Cytokinin Biosynthesis and Metabolism

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Abstract

Since the discovery of cytokinins in the 1950s, it has been clearly established that they play an important role in various processes in the growth and development of plants, including the promotion of cell division, the counteraction of senescence, the regulation of apical dominance and the transmission of nutritional signals. Kinetin (Fig. 1a) was the first substance to be identified as a cytokinin, and although it was isolated from autoclaved herring sperm DNA (34) it is not naturally produced and has not been found in living plants. The naturally occurring cytokinin trans-zeatin (tZ, Fig. 1b) was first isolated from immature maize endosperm in the early 1960s (26). In the following 40 years, several cytokinin species have been identified from various plant species (35, 43). These studies demonstrated that natural plant cytokinins are adenines which have substituted at the N6 terminal either an isoprene-derived side chain (isoprenoid cytokinins), or an aromatic derivative side chain (aromatic cytokinins).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Plant Science Center, RIKEN, 1-7-22, Tsurumi, Yokohama, 230-0045, Japan

    Hitoshi Sakakibara

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  1. Hitoshi Sakakibara
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Correspondence to Hitoshi Sakakibara .

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  1. Dept. Plant Biology, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY, 14853, USA

    Peter J. Davies

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Sakakibara, H. (2010). Cytokinin Biosynthesis and Metabolism. In: Davies, P.J. (eds) Plant Hormones. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4020-2686-7_5

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