Insight into the mechanism of end-of-day far-red light (EODFR)-induced shade avoidance responses in Arabidopsis thaliana

Shade avoidance responses are changes in plant architecture to reduce the part of a body that is in the shade in natural habitats. The most common warning signal that induces shade avoidance responses is reduction of red/far-red light ratio perceived by phytochromes. A pair of basic helix-loop-helix transcription factors, named PHYTOCHROME-INTERACTING FACTOR 4 (PIF4) and PIF5, is crucially involved in the shade avoidance-induced hypocotyl elongation in Arabidopsis thaliana. It has been recently reported that PIF7 also plays a role in this event. Here, we examined the involvement of these PIFs in end-of-day far-red light (EODFR) responses under light and dark cycle conditions. It was shown that PIF7 played a predominant role in the EODFR-dependent hypocotyl elongation. We propose the mechanism by which PIF7 together with PIF4 and PIF5 coordinately transcribes a set of downstream genes to promote elongation of hypocotyls in response to the EODFR treatment.