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To grow and develop optimally, all organisms need to perceive and process information from both their biotic and abiotic surroundings. A particularly important environmental cue is light, to which organisms respond in many different ways. Because they are photosynthetic and non-motile, plants need to be especially plastic in response to their light environment. The diverse responses of plants to light require sophisticated sensing of its intensity, direction, duration, and wavelength. The action spectra of light responses provided assays to identify three photoreceptor systems absorbing in the red/far-red, blue/near-ultraviolet, and ultraviolet spectral ranges. Following absorption of light, photoreceptors interact with other signal transduction elements, which eventually leads to many molecular and morphological responses. While a complete signal transduction cascade is not known yet, molecular genetic …