These hormones are found in abundance in all of the complex plants, bacteria, mosses, and fungi on the planet. It is estimated that there are over 200 different types of synthetic and natural cytokinins, with the majority of them developing in the meristem of the roots. It is the term of a type of plant tissue that actively encourages cell development. It is found in the root system. A meristem is a location in a plant where new growth occurs, similar to the top of the stem.
Agrobacterium is a wonderful creature that deserves to be recognised. Its work over the last 100 years has revolutionised plant molecular genetics and given rise to a whole new sector dedicated to the genetic modification of plants, which is now worth billions of dollars worldwide. In the beginning, studies were conducted primarily with the goal of determining the source of damaging galls on ornamental plants and fruit trees. Crown gall was first documented in the United States in 1907 by two plant pathologists, Smith and Townsend, who discovered that the causative agent of the disease, which they dubbed Bacterium tumefaciens, was a bacterium.
The discovery of this very rare plant disease by Armin Braun, a scientist at the Rockefeller Institute in Princeton, New Jersey, more than 30 years later, proved that it was a disease with features that had never been observed before. His observations prompted a number of thought-provoking questions. When a bacteria causes a sickness in which the nutritional characteristics of the infected cells have changed (Braun, 1958), what is the mechanism through which this occurs? And, perhaps most significantly, how could these modifications take place in the absence of the bacteria (White and Braun, 1941)? Answering these questions required technologies that Braun did not have at his disposal. In the 1960s, a number of laboratories with expertise in the techniques of bacterial genetics and nucleic acid chemistry began to conduct research into the system. Several important discoveries were produced in a relatively short period of time. Gall development has been proved to be associated with an exceptionally big plasmid that has been found. Following this discovery, it was discovered that a fragment of the plasmid had been transported and randomly incorporated into the chromosome of the plant cell. Across the next ten years, studies from laboratories all over the world provided definitive answers to these main issues. What exactly do the genes that have been transferred to the plant cell code for? I’m curious about the signals that are exchanged between plants and microbes.
Why has Agrobacterium evolved the intricate machinery required to cause tumours to develop on plant cells?
Numerous solutions to these issues led to the development of paradigms that are now considered to be of broad biological significance and which apply not just to bacterial–plant interactions, but also to bacterial–animal interactions.
Understanding the fundamental biology of this one-of-a-kind system made it possible to develop Agrobacterium as a key player in the genetic modification of plants, which is now widely used. This bacteria, on the other hand, possesses skills that go beyond the alteration of plant cells. It has been demonstrated that Agrobacterium can transfer its T-DNA into representative algae, fungus, and even human cells in the laboratory. The study of other eukaryotic cells should now be conceivable because of the advances made possible by Agrobacterium in plant cell research.
If we are to grasp the crown gall system, we must recognise the characteristics of Agrobacterium that have helped to the remarkable progress that has been made in understanding this system. When grown on a basic medium, the organism develops quickly, and it is responsive to genetic changes similar to those seen in Escherichia coli.
Conclusion
Therefore it can be finally concluded that a class of phytohormones known as cytokinins are involved in a wide range of plant processes such as growth, differentiation and leaf senescence. They do, however, engage in a variety of tasks in animals. In human fibroblasts, for example, the antioxidants kinetin and trans-zeatin have been shown to lower the levels of many ageing indicators. Kinetin has also been shown to protect mice against oxidative and glyoxidative stress, as well as to increase the longevity of fruit flies. Aside from that, a number of cytokinins are currently being used in cosmetics.