“…Two developmental stages, the formation of axillary meristems and the subsequent axillary bud outgrowth, are involved in shoot development (Shimizu-Sato and Mori, 2001), and many researches have tried to elucidate the mechanisms of the two stages. It has been demonstrated that three phytohormones, auxin, cytokinin, and strigolactone, participate in the regulation of axillary bud outgrowth, while auxin and strigolactone act as inhibiters and cytokinin acts as a promoter (Cheng et al, 2013). The mechanism underlying axillary meristem initiation is unclear, despite the fact that a set of pathway transcription factors have been identified from branching-deficient mutants, including: 1) the NAC domain protein CUP-SHAPED COTYLEDON3 (CUC3) from Arabidopsis (Vroemen et al, 2003;Hibara et al, 2006); 2) the GRAS domain protein LATERAL SUPPRESSOR (LAS) from Arabidopsis (Greb et al, 2003), and its homolog Ls from tomato (Schumacher et al, 1999), as well as MONOCULM1 (MOC1) from rice (Li et al, 2003); 3) R2R3 MYBs LATERAL ORGAN FUSION1/2 (LOF1/2) (Lee et al, 2009) and REGULATOR OF AXILLARY MERISTEMS (RAX1/2/3) (Keller et al, 2006;Müller et al, 2006) from Arabidopsis, and their respective homologs TRIFOLIATE (Tf) (Naza et al, 2013) and BLIND (Bl) (Schmitz et al, 2002) from tomato; 4) the bHLH protein REGULATOR OF AXILLARY MERISTEM FORMATION (ROX) from Arabidopsis (Yang et al, 2012), and its orthologs LAX PANICLE1 (LAX1) from rice (Komatsu et al, 2001(Komatsu et al, , 2003 and BARREN STALK1 (BA1) from maize (Gallavotti et al, 2004).…”