Plant Biology

Track Representative: Mona Mehdy

The Plant Molecular Biology faculty address fundamental biological questions important to plant development, physiology and evolution at molecular, cellular and organismal levels. Plants not only provide us with food, fiber and shelter but have also provided the experimental systems for major advances in science such as the discovery of hereditary laws (Gregor Mendel’s work in garden peas), the discovery of transposable elements (Barbara McClintock’s work in maize) and the discovery of RNA interference (co-suppresion in petunia). Arabidopsis thaliana, a fast growing flowering plant with a completely sequenced genome, has become a major model organism for studies in genetics, development, cell biology and evolutionary biology.

Faculty with research interests in plant molecular biology represents a broad range on several frontiers of plant molecular biology. These include cell fate determination, cellulose biosynthesis and fiber development, signal transduction, gene regulation by light and environmental cues, RNA splicing, translational regulation, function of duplicate genes and genomes, comparative genomics, plant pathogen interactions, molecular systematics, and phenotypic evolution.

Students interested in plant molecular biology are encouraged to explore the exciting research in the laboratories listed below.