There is much interest in understanding the pathways that trigger biosynthesis of the plant hormone auxin. In this issue, Stepanova et al. (2008) and Tao et al. (2008) reveal that a small family of tryptophan aminotransferases catalyze formation of indole-3-pyruvic acid (IPA) from L-tryptophan (L-Trp), the first step in a pathway for auxin biosynthesis.
