Joseph J. Kieber.

CYTOKININ AND THE ESTABLISHMENT OF A RESEARCH PROGRAM Wanting to challenge himself further, Kieber gradually turned towards another classic hormone, cytokinin, for which the underlying molecular signals were relatively unstudied even though the physiological responses were very well known. Graph At the crux of understanding plant biology lies the intricate hormone circuitry coordinating morphological and physiological changes as plants grow and adapt to their environment. While performing a BLAST search, Kieber found that the locus to which I CTR1 i mapped had a gene encoding a protein with high homology to members of the Raf-1 kinase family, suggesting that it was a protein kinase. Kieber and his student, Ingrid Brandstatter, suggested that these proteins were involved in early cytokinin signal transduction ([1]); Kieber spent the next two decades investigating and proving this hypothesis correct. [Extracted from the article]