ABSTRACT
Cytokinin, discovered in 1955, was shown to stimulate division and sustained growth of tobacco pith cells when provided in combination with auxin and was thus described as a “cell division factor”. This chapter reviews the progress that has been made on the regulation of plant gene expression by cytokinin. One of the challenges in writing a review on cytokinins and plant gene regulation is choosing a logical way to organize it. Several researchers studied the effects of cytokinin on plant gene expression in systems where cell growth and division require cytokinin. Numerous researchers have studied cytokinin-regulated gene expression in the context of tissue differentiation. Many reports have appeared in the literature that describe the effects of introducing into plants a cytokinin biosynthetic gene from the T-DNA of Agrobacterium tumefaciens. Excised cotyledons have been widely used to study cytokinin-induced changes in gene expression in the context of developmental changes.
