Probing Gibberellin Receptors in the Avena fatua Aleurone

The cereal aleurone is a convenient model system for studying gibberellin (GA) action. Aleurone layers respond to application of exogenous GA by synthesizing and secreting a number of hydrolytic enzymes that are capable of hydrolyzing the stored reserves of the endosperm, and there are good reasons to believe that GA1 produced by germinating wheat (Lenton and Appleford, Chapter 13 of this volume) barley,1 and wild oat (P. Hedden, personal communication, 1988) embryos elicits a similar response in vivo.