Seed germination is regulated by many signals. We investigated the possible involvement of a heterotrimeric G protein complex in this signal regulation. Seeds that carry a protein null mutation in the gene encoding the alpha subunit of the G protein in Arabidopsis (GPA1) are 100-fold less responsive to gibberellic acid (GA), have increased sensitivity to high levels of Glc, and have a near-wild-type germination response to abscisic acid and ethylene, indicating that GPA1 does not directly couple these signals in germination control. Seeds ectopically expressing GPA1 are at least a million-fold more responsive to GA, yet still require GA for germination. We conclude that the GPA1 indirectly operates on the GA pathway to control germination by potentiation. We propose that this potentiation is directly mediated by brassinosteroids (BR) because the BR response and synthesis mutants, bri1-5 and det2-1, respectively, share the same GA sensitivity as gpa1 seeds. Furthermore, gpa1 seeds are completely insensitive to brassinolide rescue of germination when the level of GA in seeds is reduced. A lack of BR responsiveness is also apparent in gpa1 roots and hypocotyls suggesting that BR signal transduction is likely coupled by a heterotrimeric G protein at various points in plant development.Seeds integrate many intrinsic signals to control germination (Koornneef et al., 2002). For example, since the original observation by Chrispeels and Varner (1966), it has been repeatedly shown that GA induces germination and that abscisic acid (ABA) antagonizes the GA effect (Koornneef and Van der Veen, 1980;Karssen et al., 1989; Gilroy and Jones, 1994;Ritchie and Gilroy, 1998;Lovegrove and Hooley, 2000). Seed germination of GA synthesis mutants can be rescued by the application of GA and ABA synthesis and insensitive mutants lack the ABA inhibition of GA-induced germination as well as being viviparous (Koornneef et al., 1982(Koornneef et al., , 1984 Finkelstein and Somerville, 1990;Koornneef and Karssen, 1994;Leon-Kloosterziel et al., 1996). Brassinosteroid (BR) probably acts downstream of GA because BR is able to rescue germination of GA-deficient (Steber and McCourt, 2001) and GA response (Steber et al., 1998) mutant seeds. These authors argue that the BR input is likely to reside upstream of ABA's attenuating effect on GA-induced germination because BR synthesis and response mutants have slightly altered ABA sensitivity.The inhibitory effect of high concentrations of sugars on germination may occur via ABA. The evidence supporting this comes from measurements of ABA in Glc-treated seedlings (Arenas-Huertero et al., 2000) and from the observation that ABA synthesis and response mutants are insensitive to Glc (Laby et al., 2000;Rook et al., 2001). Ethylene controls the Glc inhibition of germination (Zhou et al., 1998). Evidence supporting this includes the observations that high concentrations of ethylene antagonize the Glc repression of germination (Ghassemian et al., 2000), the ctr1 (constitutive ethylene response mutant; Gibs...