Platform for plant growth, development and stress biology research

We request support for a platform of instruments essential to plant stress biology research currently taking place at UTSC in biology and chemistry. A collaborative interest of this multidisciplinary, dynamic and cohesive group is to understand how plant metabolism, nutrition, growth and development are impacted by common environmental stresses such as drought and extreme temperature. For example, one current focus is to elucidate the means by which mitochondrial respiration interacts with and aids photosynthetic metabolism during periods of drought. Efforts are also being put toward understanding the role of plant hormones in defining seed susceptibility to high temperature, understanding the protein quality control systems that enable plants to withstand high temperature and other environmental stresses. The over-arching goal of this group of principal investigators is to identify means to improve the performance of plants growing under sub-optimal field conditions.