韋保羅 Paul E. Verslues

研究乾旱期的植物生長力 定義獨有的信號機制

I am interested in the cellular and molecular mechanisms that plants use to recognize and respond to decreased water availability. This is an important topic in plant biology as drought is the main factor limiting crop production globally and is likely to get worse because of climate change. My laboratory has used genetic and proteomic-based analyses in the model plant Arabidopsis thaliana to identify new genes and new signaling mechanisms that regulate plant growth and metabolism during drought stress. We are particularly interested in understanding signaling that occurs at the interface between the cell wall-plasma membrane and cytoskeleton as this is a probable site of sensing a lack of water and initiating signaling.

We are also interested in the action of protein phosphatases and functional analysis of protein phosphorylation events that control stress response. Many of the new drought associated genes we have identified encode plant-specific proteins of unknown function. Thus, our research also addresses fundamental questions of how plants control intracellular trafficking, cytoskeleton organization, metabolism and gene regulation (e.g. alternative splicing of pre-mRNAs) in ways that are distinct from other organisms.

The in depth understanding of the cellular basis of plant drought resistance that my laboratory is generating is a prerequisite for the use of new technologies such as genome editing to improve the stress resilience of economically important plants.