SIGNALING EVENTS IN THE WOUND RESPONSE OF TOMATO PLANTS

The wound response of tomato plants provides a useful experimental system to analyse local and systemic signalling events. Wounding one region on the plant leads to changes in the expression of genes at the local site of damage and elsewhere in unwounded tissues. A wound stimulus is thus converted to signal(s) that are transduced locally and signals that are involved in establishing long-distance spread of the initial stimulus. Data from studies at Leeds will be integrated into a wider discussion of the available evidence, to work towards an integrated model for understanding signalling events in the wound response.